Deleting songs/videos on itunes?

Question

i'm running out of hard drive space so i want to delete some stuff of itunes but keep it on my ipod. why does it say that when i sync my ipod to my laptop it will delete the stuff off my ipod?

Answer 1

Because, by default, iPod is set to automatic sync. That is (in my opinion) actually very stupid function at all. If not for other reason, then at least for exactly your case.

So BEFORE you delete the music in iTunes...

Plug in your iPod, open iTunes, navigate to home page of the iPod (=click on the name of the iPod on left side in iTunes... the iPod home page is the one with the bar graph on the bottom of screen showing space usage of the iPod.).

And above that bar graph there is several check boxes... Make sure that the one saying "Manually sync music and videos" is checked.

That's it. You can now add, delete, modify any iTunes playlist and files... Nothing will happen to your iPod. If you wanna delete music in iPod you gotta open the list (click on "music" in the menu JUST BELOW the iPod name on left side of iTunes) and select the songs you don't want anymore and delete them. Same for copying them onto an iPod.

One more note.... Remember that via iTunes you CANNOT copy the music back from iPod onto your computer. So if you delete song in computer and have it still on iPod, you cannot put it back to computer from iPod.

For that you will need another, 3rd party software.

That is stupid function purposely invented by Apple to prevent people from sharing music by plugging iPods into different computers and copying music there from the iPod. Fortunately people are smarter than idiotic company and created those 3rd party programs which will do just that... copy the music back from iPod into any computer. Servers Apple right.

good luck, have fun

johnny