iTunes Question - How do I handle this?

[Jayce]

My buddy has a laptop with XP that's in need of a format. Trick is, he has an iPod with all of his music on it. He also has his iTunes library on his laptop.

His iPod CANNOT change at all. The music on it is the "final copy" of stuff he wants. However, he hasn't updated his iTunes library on the laptop for quite some time, so he doesn't want the iTunes library on the laptop to sync to the iPod. If anything, he wants the iPod to "copy" to the laptop.

I'm backing up his iTunes folder now before I blast the install and redo it. Question is, when I install iTunes, is there any specific settings I should choose to prevent his iPod/iTunes from syncing and ultimately removing the music on his iPod? I've heard that syncing iPods with empty iTunes libraries can ruin it, so I wanted to be sure.

Ultimately, if we can connect his iPod back to his newly formatted computer and EVERYTHING on his iPod get transferred to the laptop, that would be 100% ideal. Is this possible? If not, what do I do with iTunes to set it up properly? Clearly I hope people at Apple at least had some sort of common sense to consider this situation...

 

[Hefemeister]

see if this helps at all.

http://www.techist.com/forums/f12/how-copy-ipod-back-pc-free-178989/

 

[Jayce]

Thanks. I'll be sure to link that to him and tell him to try it then.

-1 for iTunes.