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calebjohnston

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 24, 2006
1,801
1
Can iPods be used merely as an external harddrive? My mom has one that's busted and I'm thinking about trying to fix it to use it as means for storage. Is this possible?
 
Yeah, enable disk usage in the iTunes (iPod) Preferences. Having said that, the iPod was not designed for heavy hard drive accessing so this may limit its life. :)
 
thejadedmonkey said:
It's a normal laptop hard drive.


I thought it was a 1.8 inch drive, not a 2.5 inch drive. It doesn't really matter one way or the other but the main issue is when the drive is kept inside the iPod, the ventilation is limited at best. :(
 
mad jew said:
I thought it was a 1.8 inch drive, not a 2.5 inch drive. It doesn't really matter one way or the other but the main issue is when the drive is kept inside the iPod, the ventilation is limited at best. :(
True, it is a 1.8", not a 2.5", but the 1.8" is a normal laptop hard drive. Toshibe MK2006GAL if I remember correctly.

I used mine to hold WoW for a while, and after numerous drops, and extended useage, my hard drive is still fine. I mean, the motherboard in my iPod got friend so it can't read the hard drive anymore, which is why I was forced to get the adapter off of ebay, but my point is, it should work fine no matter how you choose to interface with the computer (iPod or via some other adapter)

P.S. Brainstorm...it sohuld be fine in the iPod too, because the iPod keeps the hard drive just as enclosed as any laptop hard drive...
 
The ipod's tiny tiny hard drive is used in some ultra portable laptops.
Except those laptops have much better ventilation than the ipod. And heat really messes with the mechanical operating tolerances of the unit so you're more likely to have the hard drive run outside safe tolerances w/o knowing it and crash.

It'll probably be safe to use for you or your mom as standard storage for pictures and whatnot but i wouldn't use it for anything disk intensive like videos or anything important like work files w/o a good frequent backup strategy.
 
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