Broken Ipod as Portable Harddrive

Undisclosed · Post by **Undisclosed** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 2:35 pm

My friend broke his old ipod a while back and I fixed it once and dont wont to deal with it again. He's forgotten about it and left it here. I took the harddrive out (which works) and I want to make a small 20gb portable hard drive. I looked around for how-to's and other people who have tried and got lil luck.
Any ideas?

Reaperman@home · Post by **Reaperman@home** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 3:30 pm

ipods use a standard microdrive setup, correct? if so, the pins should be the same as CF.

assuming that's all true, all you really need is the smallest USB CF reader you can find to hook up USB. or if you'd rather go IDE (why?), a CF/IDE adapter.

gamemasterAS · Post by **gamemasterAS** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 3:42 pm

Or you could hock it up to a gbamp.

20 gigs of roms

josh · Post by **josh** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 4:06 pm

gamemasterAS wrote:Or you could hock it up to a gbamp.

20 gigs of roms

AWESOMESAUCE!

sgtpepper · Post by **sgtpepper** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 6:41 pm

gamemasterAS wrote:Or you could hock it up to a gbamp.

20 gigs of roms

That's what I was going to do with a 60Gb iPod HD, but I don't know if I really wanna go through the trouble...

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:22 pm

i could be wrong here, but isnt there some reasonable maximum amount of memory that thing can address? id be mighty surprised if you actually managed to get all 20 or 60gb to show up on the first try.

also, say goodbye to your battery life

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 10:47 pm

Normal iPods use a 1.8" hard drive, not a CF card. On top of that, it seems they connect to the motherboard via a custom ribbon cable.

You might be better off searching ebay for iPods w/out or w/broken hard drives, and sticking your hard drive inside.

Example- obviously has broken hdd

sgtpepper · Post by **sgtpepper** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 3:39 pm

teraflop122 wrote:Normal iPods use a 1.8" hard drive, not a CF card. On top of that, it seems they connect to the motherboard via a custom ribbon cable.

The 1.8 inch HDs use the same interface as a Compact Flash card, therefor the same connector. There's no special ribbon cable in an iPod, just a CF connector that doesn't have all the pins (I guess it just doesn't utilize them). I can post a picture of one of my dead iPod's connector later, if anyone wants...
And while I'm on the subject, does anyone have interest in a bunch of 3rd gen, 4th gen, and iPod photo parts? (not for free of course

)

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:05 pm

Two sources show the hard drive connected via a custom ribbon cable. One is soldered to the drive, the other uses one of those thin ribbon connectors.

Look at the bottum- whichever gen existed in 2001
Ipod Video

Obviously different generations use different connections.

EDIT: Nevermind. The iPod 4th gen uses a standardized connector, as sgtpepper said.

sgtpepper · Post by **sgtpepper** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:16 pm

teraflop122 wrote:Two sources show the hard drive connected via a custom ribbon cable. One is soldered to the drive, the other uses one of those thin ribbon connectors.

Look at the bottum- whichever gen existed in 2001
Ipod Video

Obviously different generations use different connections.

I have both of those iPods and yes you're right about them being different, but you're missing the fact that the cable detaches from the hard drive to reveal a compact flash connector.

The only iPod that had the cable actually soldered was the 1st gen, the rest had detachable cables as seen here:

http://www.ifixit.com/cart/customer/pro ... at=&page=1
http://www.ifixit.com/cart/customer/pro ... at=&page=1
http://www.ifixit.com/cart/customer/pro ... at=&page=1

The video iPods are where it gets tricky because the hard drives use a different connector, but I believe they still use the same interface. So you would either need to find an adaptor or solder another connector.

A_Username · Post by **A_Username** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:20 pm

gamemasterAS wrote:Or you could hock it up to a gbamp.

20 gigs of roms

Kinda like there are like 10MBS of Atari 2600 games. I don't even think their are 20GBs of GBA ROMs. If the Pins are the same as CF, you could hook it up to the PS3's CF Slot.

-Derek

A_Username · Post by **A_Username** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:22 pm

One question, I've wondered this a lot with these type of posts, HOW CAN YOU KILL AN IPOD??!! I have a 1st Gen and I treat it like gold.

sgtpepper · Post by **sgtpepper** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:42 pm

A_Username wrote:One question, I've wondered this a lot with these type of posts, HOW CAN YOU KILL AN IPOD??!! I have a 1st Gen and I treat it like gold.

Same here, but for some reason my 4th gen's HD died, so I put a new battery in my 1st gen and that's what I currently use.

Undisclosed · Post by **Undisclosed** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 5:57 pm

One question, I've wondered this a lot with these type of posts, HOW CAN YOU KILL AN IPOD??!! I have a 1st Gen and I treat it like gold.

By....not treating it like gold.

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:12 pm

A_Username wrote: I don't even think there are 20GBs of GBA ROMs.

there's about 10 gigs.

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