Among half a ton of old equipment I found a 5th generation iPod; completely dead and broken screen. I opened it and grabbed hold of the 60GB HDD, hoping I could recover all my more than 15 year old music *.mp3's. Searching for an adapter from the ribbon type connection to a USB I found the ZHEINO 1.8 USB 2.0 external box PATA 1,8 ZIF (40 pin) and sure enough, it is recognized as a drive on my Windows 10 PC USB connection. Problem is (as expected), that Windows does not recognize what's in the new external USB HDD.
So the question is, what program will be able to "translate" the files and folders in this HDD and be capable of saving them for me in a folder I create in my Windows drive??
Remember, it is not an iPod any longer, just the 60GB HDD that was in it and is now connected via a USB to my PC.
I would think you could "Add files/folders" to iTunes from any external source unless you're using a different computer to what you had in your iPod Classic days.
Apple were pretty touchy about sharing music between different computers.
Did a little research ...
These files are not, in fact, encrypted. The id3 tags are still intact. If you re-add the files to iTunes, the proper names and artists should show up, assuming they were tagged correctly in the first place.
If you have "copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library" and "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized" checked in advanced preferences, it should rename the files and put them in folders by artist in your music folder when you add the files to iTunes.
If you're able to get them restored I'd recommend scanning all of them with a freeware tool called AudioTester to make sure the restored MP3s don't have any corruption/errors since it doesn't take much at all to damage them which could result into pops/clicks sounds when playing them.