9152 Most of us have plenty of unused space on our iPods. Heck; I have a first generation 5 gigabyte 'Pod and there's more than three gigabytes of free space available after loading my entire music collection. And while I expect that most users don't have much trouble filling up a 5 gigabyte iPod, a 4 GB or 6 GB iPod mini, or one of the new 2 GB or 4 GB iPod nanos, who's got the time to rip, download, etc., 20 gigabytes or 30 gigabytes of music, let alone listen to it. OK; don't ask, but I'm confident that there is plenty of unused space on iPod hard drives and flash memory out there. According to this report, one study found that the average MP3 player (all brands) has only 375 songs on it.

An iPod, save for the shuffle and nano, is essentially a self or bus powered hard drive in a fancy case with a user control interface, a monitor, and an audio out system, and thanks to its built-in FireWire connectivity, it can serve very well as an external hard drive for backing up files, transferring data, and so forth. You can't even boot your computer from it if you install an operating system (full-size iPods only), although this is not recommended except for emergencies as it places a lot of wear and tear on the little hard drive that it wasn't designed for.

To set up your iPod as an external hard drive:
1. Connect it to your computer with a FireWire cable.
2. Open the iTunes application.
3. Click on the iPod icon in the left pane of the iTunes window.
4. Turn on "Enable FireWire Disk use." A dialog will appear warning that henceforth you will have to manually eject your iPod before disconnecting it, even if you only hooked it up to charge or synchronize your music files.
5. Click OK as requested. The iPod icon should appear on your Desktop, just like a hard drive or disk image volume.

You can now treat the iPod as you would any external volume. Don't worry about your music files, which will remain invisible and untouched by any file transfer activity you initiate.

Using this method is particularly helpful for storing vital data or stuff that you might like to have available when you are away from your computer but but will have your iPod with you.

You can also mount the iPod in Target Disk Mode.

To enable your iPod for use as a data storage disk, proceed as follows:
1. Connect the iPod with a USB or FireWire cable.
2. Open the iTunes application and select the iPod in the left hand source pane.
3. select Preferences from the iTunes application menu and click the iPod tab
4. From the iPod tab, select the Music tab and click the "Enable Disk Use" check box if it isn't already checked and greyed out, in which case you're already good to go.

You now should see the iPod icon on your Desktop, and you can drag files in and out of it as you would with any mounted volume.

How to manually put iPod into Disk Mode

According to this Apple Knowledge Base article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93651

When troubleshooting an issue with your iPod, it's sometimes helpful to manually put it into Disk Mode. If you're not sure which iPod model you have, click here. After manually placing an iPod into Disk Mode, you will have to reset iPod in order to return it to its normal operating state.

If you have an iPod with a Click Wheel including:

• iPod mini
• iPod (Click Wheel)
• iPod with a color display
• iPod photo
• iPod nano

1. Before manually placing the iPod into Disk Mode you should verify that it has a charge, if not you need to either charge iPod before continuing or connect it to power. You can either connect it to a high-powered USB port, or plug the iPod Power Adapter into an electrical outlet and connect iPod to the power adapter.
2. Toggle the Hold switch on and off. (Set it to Hold, then turn it off again.)
3. Press and hold the Menu and Select buttons for at least 6 seconds until the Apple logo appears.
4. When the Apple logo appears, release the Menu and Select buttons and immediately press and hold the Select and the Play/Pause buttons until the Disk Mode screen appears.
5. Disconnect iPod from the power adapter and connect it to your computer; the screen on the iPod will change and say "Do not disconnect"

If you are having difficulty putting an iPod model with a Click Wheel into Disk Mode, set the iPod on a flat surface. Make sure that the finger pressing the Select button is not touching the Click Wheel. Also make sure that you are pressing the Play/Pause button toward the outside of the Click Wheel and not near the center.

If you are still unable to put your iPod with a Click Wheel into Disk Mode, use one finger from one hand to press the Select button, and one finger from the other hand to press the Play/Pause button.

If you have an older iPod model without a Click Wheel

1. Before manually placing the iPod into Disk Mode you should verify that it has a charge, if not you need to either charge iPod before continuing or connect it to power. You can connect it to the iPod Power Adapter which needs to be connected to an electrical outlet or a 6-pin Firewire port on your computer.
2. Toggle the Hold switch on and off. (Set it to Hold, then turn it off again.)
3. Press and hold the Play/Pause and Menu buttons until the Apple/iPod logo appears, then release them. This resets iPod. When you reset iPod all your music and data files are saved, but some customized settings may be lost.
4. When the Apple logo appears, immediately press and hold the Previous and Next buttons until the Disk Mode screen appears. (For iPod Software 1.0 through 1.1, a FireWire logo appears on the screen.) Some iPods will show a "OK to Disconnect" message before you connect it to the computer. This changes to "Do Not Disconnect after connecting.
5. Disconnect iPod from the power adapter and connect it to your computer.

Charles W. Moore

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