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iPod as a music harddrive?

K

KevRC4130

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Hey guys,
So I've decided that I'm probably going to get an iPod. I'm not sure which model to get. I've got a few questions.

Can the iPod act as a music harddrive? Here is what I mean.... I know the iPod can be an external harddrive, but what I want to do is load all of iTunes on it. I know I'm not being very clear, but my Powerbook has a 60gb harddrive. After OSX, it really only has about 48 gb of usable space. If I have a 40gb iPod, I know I wont want 40gb of music on my computer, simply because my harddrive would be completely full, and I wont have any space for video editing, dvd burning, games, MS Office, etc. So what I ultimatly want to do is make it so my complete iTunes file is on the iPod, and when I want to play music through my computer speakers and/or do something with the file, I can just plug in the iPod and use the songs. I realise I won't have any songs when the iPod isn't plugged in, but I'll just leave a few (hundred 😛 ) of my favorite songs on the computer harddrive. Would this work?

Also, how much bigger/heavier physically is the 40gb over the 20gb? It must be a pretty big amount if they have different cases and everything.

Does it act as a good external harddrive? Would it be the same as buying a LaCie (sp?) 40gb drive, or is it just kind of quirky and useless?

Do you think the dock and remote are worthy and useful accessories? I guess I don't really don't need either, but at the same time both would be nice.

I can't decide if I want the 20gb or the 40gb. I pretty much KNOW that I won't ever have or need 10,000 songs in my pocket, but it seems like the added accessories make the extra $100 worthwile, plus if it acts as an external harddrive it might be the best choice.

Sorry for the super long post, Thanks alot! 🙂
 
I have a friend's iPod plugged in right now- It allows me to see all the music (in iTunes) on her rig. So technically, this works, but it doesn't make any sense. How would you edit anything, rename tracks etc? Also, I don't know what your music library is worth to you, but if you don't have a copy of everything on your hard drive, you lose everything if your pod is stolen, or the drive dies, etc. Definitely not recommended at all, and I bet it would be a pain in the ass to manage this way anyway. Buy an external hard drive and keep your local copies there.
 
it's possible to leave the only copy of the song on the iPod used as a HD. (like dragging the entire iTunes Music Folder to iPod mounted as HD... then dragging them back to iTunes - iTunes will see that the songs are on external and will only be able to play when iPod is plugged in) do remember that you won't be able to listen to those songs on the iPod - as far as iPod is concerned, they are just files.

so if you wanted to keep the copies on the iPod (that you can easily recover to your original HD without using a third party software) and be able to listen to them on the iPod, you'd need to maintain two copies of each song. not very efficient, IMO...

buy a cheap external and store music on that... serves as a good backup anyway...

20 GB is not much bigger than the 40GB. slightly "fatter" but not so much that it makes much practical difference.

iPod works perfectly well as an external HD.

i personally think dock is a waste. you can just sync fine via cable. remote isn't very useful either because it's hard to navigate without the scroll wheel. if you intend to have good playlists, maybe it's marginally useful.
 
Thanks for the replies....

Here are my thoughts now:

I'm probably going to get the 20gb, because I know I won't have more than 20gb of music, and the only reason I wanted the 40gb was the extra space for use as an external drive. However, if I need to keep the 20gb of songs on the computer drive, I'm gonna get an external harddrive anyways, so since im getting a drive I don't need the iPod's space. How does this sound?

The deciding factor is how important people think the 40's included accessories are, and that maybe I should get the 40gb just because its a better value (though probably unneeded). What do you think?

Thanks!
 
jxyama said:
it's possible to leave the only copy of the song on the iPod used as a HD. (like dragging the entire iTunes Music Folder to iPod mounted as HD... then dragging them back to iTunes - iTunes will see that the songs are on external and will only be able to play when iPod is plugged in) do remember that you won't be able to listen to those songs on the iPod - as far as iPod is concerned, they are just files.

so if you wanted to keep the copies on the iPod (that you can easily recover to your original HD without using a third party software) and be able to listen to them on the iPod, you'd need to maintain two copies of each song. not very efficient, IMO...
Click to expand...

that's not entirely true.

I have on my iPod all of my music. When I go to work, I have no music files on the computer but I listen to my iPod through iTunes. No problem.

All you have to do is turn on "Manually manage songs and playlists" and you can keep all your music on the iPod, listen to it through the computer as well as listen to the iPod on it's own. So it's definitely doable.



You will have to use a third party tool to extract the music files from the iPod if you want to copy them somewhere, but it has not caused me a headache thus far.
 

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i assume your PB is relatively new and comes with USB2?

i had an external FW HD where i stored my music and an iPod, like you said. the problem was, since my PB is a rev. A 12", it only has one FW port. so i couldn't hook up both iPod and HD at the same time without a hub. so i was never able to transfer the music directly from my HD to the iPod. (i got around it by borrowing my work's PM, which has two FW ports - i was not about to transfer a lot of music via USB1.)

if you have newer machines with USB2, shouldn't br a problem...
 
zarathustra said:
You will have to use a third party tool to extract the music files from the iPod if you want to copy them somewhere, but it has not caused me a headache thus far.
Click to expand...

that's why i said:

(that you can easily recover to your original HD without using a third party software)
Click to expand...

if you wanted a copy of a music to be listenable on the iPod and also be easily copied back (as opposed to just being able to play back) to the HD without using a third party tool, then you have to have two copies of that music on the iPod - one normal and one under FW HD mode - both in the same iPod.
 
I've got a Rev. C Powerbook 12" 1.33ghz, which unfortunatly only has one Firewire port.... 😡

*EDIT* Now I see what you mean, I've also got 2 USB 2.0's 🙂

One more question, does the 40gb come with a remote or not? I can't seem to get a solid answer.
 
KevRC4130 said:
One more question, does the 40gb come with a remote or not? I can't seem to get a solid answer.
Click to expand...

i think the only confusion was at the beginning when not all of apple's documentations were consistent. i think it's cleared up by now.

4th gen. 40 GB only comes with a dock. (20 GB doesn't.) no remote, no case.
 
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