We'll admit it; the idea for this post came from personal experience. Even the hard-boiled tech experts in the Obsessable office can be blindsided by technical problems sometimes. A certain Obsessable editor who won't be explicitly named kept his vast collection of music files stored in two places: on his laptop hard drive, and on his iPhone. Tragically, the laptop joined the choir invisible, and the music survived only on the iPhone.

The true tragedy: there's no way to use iTunes to pull the music back off of the iPhone. In fact, to sync the handset with iTunes on any computer other than the dead laptop would erase all those precious tracks. It was such a diverse collection this unnamed Obsessable editor had; from Common to Brian Eno, from Rhianna to Feist. It would be unacceptable for all that to disappear into the ether. So, he set out on a quest to rescue his music and succeeded, and we've got his discoveries here so you can do it too!

We found three programs that would do the job. Give them a try and you might not have to lose those rare My Bloody Valentine B-Sides after all.

Senuti

This Mac OS X-only program by FadingRed had the simplest interface of the programs we tried. Load it up, choose a folder, and simply select the song or songs you want to copy to your computer and click the Transfer button in the top left corner. Senuti can even import your files directly into your iTunes library. This option wins for simplicity and elegance, and for the fact that it lets you transfer up to 1,000 songs before you have to buy it. Unfortunately, it won't help you much if your computer isn't a Mac.

TuneAid

Windows and Mac users wanting more features will want to turn to DigiDNA's TuneAid, which is available for both platforms. There's a trial version, but it only lets you copy a handful of songs before registering so it's not much use. It only costs $14.90 to buy, though; surely that's cheaper than the entirety of your music collection. Not only does it work in Windows, but it has Senuti beat in options and features. Like Senuti, though, it lets you grab files and copy them to a folder or your iTunes library.

DiskAid

DiskAid (also from DigiDNA, and also for both Mac and PC) has two primary advantages over the other two: it always works, and it's free. In some cases we had trouble pulling files with Senuti and TuneAid, but DiskAid never failed us. It allows you to browse your iPod or iPhone's storage like it's any other folder on your computer. The downside here is that since it's just copying media files, it won't copy over the device's track, artist, or album information properly. You'll enter that stuff all over again by hand unless you don't care that your songs now carry names that are meaningless alphanumeric strands.

DiskAid isn't just a last resort, though; it also does something else the other two don't. This program can copy over the music you've purchased on your device. Our purchased items didn't show up in Senuti or TuneAid, but they did in DiskAid, albeit with the nonsensical names. Just take note of your track and artists names before you do anything that will wipe your phone's library, and rename the purchased items by hand once they're rescued.