usb flash memory dongles on OSX

[Anonymous Freak]

my ipod is an older one so i got a firewire cable with it, if i was to attempt to boot from it would i need to completly wipe the ipod?

How fast is an ipod harddrive?

No, you just need to enable Disk Mode, then run the OS installer and choose your iPod as the target hard drive. Of course, if you have a 5GB iPod that's full of music, you would need to empty up SOME room. (If you have the previous-generation 60GB iPod, then you should be fine.)

An iPod hard drive is faster than flash memory, but slower than even a notebook hard drive. The iPod hard drive spins at 3500 RPM (for the older ones, I think the latest are 4200 RPM,) compared to 'slow' notebook hard drives 4200 RPM, and average notebook drives at 5400 RPM, and average desktop hard drives at 7200 RPM. That's just the RPMs. The underlying technology has notebook and desktop drives faster, too.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Are you sure about that? I always though flash memory was faster than traditional hard drives. I don't really know though.

The fastest flash memory I can find (Sandisk Extreme III Compact Flash, $169.49 for 1GB,) is rated at '133x'. They use CD-ROM style 'x' ratings, where 1x is 150 KB per second. So 133x is about 20 MB per second, for insanely expensive flash. Even the 1.8" hard drive in the iPod maxes out at 30 MB/s. Current generation laptop hard drives range from 18 to 50 MB/s, and current generation desktop hard drives range from 40 to 70 MB/s. The ultimate speed king, the Maxtor Atlas 15K II SCSI drive has a top speed of almost 100 MB/s.

By contrast, my 512MB Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo High Speed manages somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 MB/s through a USB 2.0 reader. By comparison, USB 1.1 tops out at 1.5 MB/s, FireWire 400 at 50 MB/s, USB 2.0 at 60 MB/s, and FireWire 800 at 100 MB/s.