1265 Earlier this week, I posted a column about using hard drive iPods as backup devices. However, the flash memory iPods, the shuffle and nano, can store data files too, although with a maximum capacity of four gigabytes, these models are not really suited to major hard drive backups.

But for incremental backups of vital files and for file transfer duty between computers, the shuffle and nano can certainly do the job. The shuffle, especially, lends itself to the sort of duty that those little pocket USB flash drives are usually employed for.

To configure your shuffle or nano to work as a data storage device, connect it to the computer, click on its icon in the iTunes source column. In the iPod pane of iTunes preferences, check the "Enable Disk Use" box, and then use the slider bar to set what amount of your iPod's memory you want to allocate to data storage instead of song files. You can always change this at a future date if you miscalculate your needs.

While you're at it, it's probably best to uncheck the box that automates opening iTunes when the iPod is plugged in, especially if you will be using the 'Pod to transfer files among different computers. Close the preference window.

Now I you will notice that the iPod appears on your computer Desktop as another volume icon, which you can drag and drop files to or from. Removing data from the iPod's memory is simply a matter of dragging or sending the item to the trash and flushing.

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Update

Reader Antoine Hébert makes the following, well taken point

I think it would have been important to mention a limitation in the iPod shuffle used as a disk. Unlike other iPods that can be formatted in HFS+, the iPod shuffle can only play music when it's formated in Win FAT32. This cause some limitations to the type of file and characters in filenames that do not exist on HFS+ so people may end up with errors when trying to copy some files to the iPod shuffle.

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Charles W. Moore

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