Feb 23, 2007
by admin at 1:07 AM

If you have pictures, songs or videos on your Zune device from your own library (IE, not purchased from Zune Marketplace, preloaded in your device, or received via wireless sharing), you can reverse sync these. That is, using the Zune software, you can copy content from your Zune device to your PC. I made a little screenshot tutorial:

First, note how my PC’s “My Videos” folder is empty:

  

I’ve decided to take a recorded/transcoded episode of The Office from my Zune device (“More Awesomer”) back to my PC. First, I connect More Awesomer  to my PC – using either a primary sync relationship or Guest Mode (either will work).

Then I click the sync icon (highlighted in yellow), and drag the content from More Awesomer.

 

I then click “copy from device” in the lower right hand corner – this status bar pops up:

 

When the video finishes, you’ll see “Copied from device” in the status column:

 

And finally, note how the video is now in my video folder:

Give it a shot - it's actually pretty cool.

48 Comments
Comments

Sweetness! :)

cool! that's one thing I hate about my iPod - I can't get the music off of it.

Hey, that's pretty cool. Is this even documented anywhere?

If not, MS need to use this to their advantage against Apple.

Really?!? Now THAT'S What I call a feature! You guys should definitely highlight that!

Dude, shouldn't the screen shots be in Vista instead of XP. As you are a Microsoft employee, I would think you would have vista by now.

^^ LOL...good one

This has saved my life. I had Vista RC1 installed(Don't worry, it was legal) with zune on it. Then I formatted and reinstalled XP, but I forgot to backup all my songs(20GB worth). Luckily I knew the zune had the reverse sync thing so I could get it all back. Very Nice!

Actually, the iPod has the reverse version of this. You can transfer music purchased on iTunes back to the PC.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/sync/transfer.html

This doesn't really help me since all of my music is my own though.

This is a great feature that is a little difficult to discover.  Good screenshot walkthrough though!

I wish Apple would let you do that.  Once you put content on your iPod, it's stuck.  It IS possible to get content off it, but it isn't really easy.

Finally...Zune is sweet!

This is good for not having to encode the same video (into wmv) more than once.

Nice thanks!  I put The Office on my Zune too!

if the damn thing had ums support we wouldnt have to bother with all those steps.  4 months later, still no significant improvements.

That's pretty sweet, that'll work with all of my existing music and stuff?  Awesom-o!

THANK GOD!  You know, this makes total sense now that you show it, but I was wondering how I could do this.  It was really sucking that the only way I could transport ripped CDs from my work computer  to my home computer was with a seperate device.  Thanks!

Still need UMS support though....AND the ability to edit track information on a guest PC would be even more helpful...

It is quite easy to get the material off your iPod back to any Mac. After all, the iPod shows up as a standard mountable volume.

If you don't want to use any of the shareware or freeware applications available to make the process REALLY easy, then just drop into terminal, go into the iPod volume, and use cp or ditto to copy the music whereever you want.

omar - classic view baby :)

Cesar: Right now I am listening to Gamescoreblog Podcast and I heard they accidently deleted your interview. Too bad!

omarrpa : LOL! You should buy Cesar Vista :). i hope you dont think just because he WORKS that Microsoft doesnt mean he gets everything handed to him :P

Right they did not leave it on his desk.  He has to go to the next office to pick it up. ;)

Zuneless, you make it seem like they make it easy to get music off the iPod.  The files are intentionally hidden and all of them have random obfuscated names, to make the process harder for the average user.  The Zune way is much easier.

Random note, under the search bar when looking at the site there's a text space that says "(Edit Me)". Pointless statement but I still figured I'd say it anyways.

What is the easiest way in the Zune software to find the empty space on the Zune device? It always says Filled(after sync) on my laptop.

I hope I could just drag and drop and video or album file to sync into the device and the device would automatically make space by deleting some files (based on my preference) - some good has to come out of not having a UMS functionality :)

Hi, i just want to know something about my ZUNE, i bought it 1 month ago, and i install the software in the computer of my friend because that was the only computer around at that time.. and now ..one mont later.. i comeback to CHILE ..where i live.. and i try several times to install the software, but i can't.. Error 1609 ..and i dont know what's the problem, if is my computer, or the license because i installed in more than one computer or just because i'm not in the states ..right now i'm in Chile.. so, you know something abut thid.. what i can do?

THANKS

This is one of the best features ever.  I have a laptop with a small disk is so its handy.  

I think it's great that Zune has Guest Sync and Reverse Sync!!! I love it!!

The Option is not that great. Hasnt worked at all for me.

On three brand new computers i have Loaded the zune program to reverse sync my zune. I only did this because my comp with all my videos music and pics crashed and couldnt be fixed.

So after buying a new comp I tried putting all that was loaded to the zune on my new computer.

DOESNT WORK!!!!! Stops no matter what after one song trying to sync.

So after trying this on three comps all I have is a zune without a home and connecting as a guest everywhere else.

I cant make playlists cant erase. IT SUCKS.

Spoke to zune support and this is new to them.

Someone else having this problem???

UNA BESSTIA.

Thanks dude

Um.. When I highlight (select) a video off my Zune  the COPY FROM DEVICE thing doesn't show up. Help?

Hey about this do you not have to have your zune set not to automatic sync, because when you connect to a computer without any songs it will delet all thats on the zune. wont it not????

hOW DO I GET LIKE VIDEOS FROM iTunes on to my Zune n music if anyone knows e-MAIL me at girr001@hotmail.com thnxs!

hey how did you get all thouse videos? can you help me get some videos where to you get them from? If you can send me some.

@ Jordan. I recommend Encode360 paired with Media coder for good results

@ J.C. What videos do you want ? Use P2P, go to www.perooz.com

www.on10.net

You can get music off your iPod with just taking your music folders off your iPod to your computer and opening them itunes. They automatically rename themselves.

Thanks for this information

I reverse synced with my Zune after I reformattted. It all went smoothly except that now all of my music is VERY quiet, does anyone know how to fix this?

I am having the same issue were it is stopping at songs and it wont copy all them. looking for suggestions

It's nice and all except for the fact it assumes the files on your zune are correct and overwrites the files on your computer if they're different. In the case of torrented files that got synced to the zune before they were complete this causes them to get overwritten with incomplete files every time you connect. It should be the other way around.

i just got the old brown 30g zune & so far i'm pretty happy with it, except it's totally eating my disc space! is there any way to get the music on your zune, & then delete it from your computer, WITHOUT it automatically deleting it from the zune too?? i have HUNDREDS of cd's i want to put on here but my poor computer cant hold all this music! i know you can do that with IPODs, i figured you'd be able to with zunes for sure!

crypticworkings@hotmail.com

let me know, PLEASE!

thanks.

You can do this with iPods. Open iTunes, connect the iPod, select the option that says "enable disk use". then go to my computer, open up the ipod which should be labeled as a removable drive, look in the folders until you find one with folders named F00, F01 and copy and paste these onto your computer. You're done. if ever you need to put therses songs back onto the ipod, open the folders and put the songs onto itunes

:)

FYI, you can also access the Zune HDD with a couple of registry update.

Fred

For such a simple process that is included in the software, why is it not documented somewhere.  BTW-you can take stuff off an Ipod and back to the computer but you need a helper program to do it (ipod rip).  But this is sooooo much easier.

why is it certain tracks wont copy back to my pc?

a new folder is formed within the zune folder, but the track appears to be a .tmp file of a few hundred K.

other times dragging does nothing

How about reverse syncing playlists?  I just moved the Zune software to a new PC and it will not let me reverse sync the playlists or podcasts from my Zune device.  Zune support says "sorry!".  Please drop me an email at ahalowell@cox.net if you know how to accomplish this.

My question is what program is he using because my zune program 2.5 does not look like that at all.... I think that it looks like itunes but with the zune touch which i like.

does anyone know what program that he is using?

email me at fighterpilotmav@Hotmail.com

Thanks,

Tyler

I had a hard drive fail and used the reverse sync to reocver all of my music. In the current version of Zune 2.5 software what I did was connect the Zune, select Guest, click Device, click Music, click the first artist listed, press CTRL+A (to select all artists), right click that list, and then click Sync. Unfortunately there's no good status update - it always shows 100% until it's done. But it worked! :)

hey, what zune software is this?

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