Using an iPod as an External Hard Drive?

Is it possible to use an iPod (e.g. 5G iPods) as an external hard drive and a hard drive to maybe even boot from? I read on Wikipedia (sorry if this is old news) that mac formatted iPods are HFS Plus, and they give a mac user the ability to boot from the iPod itself, and Windows based iPods are FAT32. I also read that you could store files on it. Now if i did this, i would have no intention of actually accessing the files from my iPod itself, but merely storing them there as a backup. Now, to booting from it. If the hard drive format is recognized by Windows, would it be possible to boot from the iPod?

All of this is in theory, i neither tried nor plan on trying to do this. I would just like to hear your input on this.

#438861

Yes. iPods can be used as external USB drives. All you have to do is tick "enable disk use" in the summary pane of the iPod controls in iTunes 7.

However you will now have to manually unmount the iPod by clicking the eject icon next to the iPod name, or through windows safely remove hardware tray icon.

I haven't tried booting from it, but FAT32 is a bootable filesystem, in windows.

#438902

my computer regularly tries to boot from my ipod if it's still plugged in, but since there is nothing to boot from it instead spends about 10 seconds reading it and then goes on booting xp.

However, to boot from it you'll probably need disk mode:

hold centre and menu together till you see an apple, then let go and immediately press centre and play/pause.

#438904

Wow....so now i have 4 external hard drives lol. I just wanted to know this because in case of an emergency it would be possible to use my iPod as a last resort (considering my computer is acting really retarded lately). What's the difference between a hard drive and flash memory used by Shuffle?

#438929

A harddrive has moving parts, like the head that reads the data on the platters. Flash memory on the other hand has no moving parts. It's just memory chips. Advantage? More resistent to shocks, uses less energy. Disadvantage: storage-size is limited compared to harddrives. So flash-drives are not really practical to use as bootable media for an OS.

#438950

I have a Shuffle and I have successfully booted from it with Puppy Linux on it and it worked like a charm.

#438958

ok i understand now. I have another question. If you have a mac formatted iPod, and you choose to boot from it on a Windows based computer, would it work?

#438963

Request tags should not be used when you're requesting help or information...in that case, use the help tag. Please keep this in mind for the future.

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#439016