HD-based MP3 players and running?

December 1, 2005 6:57 AM

Hard Drive based MP3 players and running?

I'm thinking of upgrading to an MP3 player with more storage. It seems as if one pays a premium for flash based storage, though, and that players with much more storage (but with harddrives) are only slightly more expensive. Just as one example, the 4gb Nano is $249, but the 30gig iPod is only $50 more.

Is it crazy to try to run with a HD based player? What are your experiences working out with you HD based MP3 player?

posted by OmieWise to Technology (25 answers total)

I've been running pretty often with my hd-based iPod mini ever since I got it (over a year now), and haven't had a problem. I use an armband from amphipod, which may help minimize the jiggling.
posted by bobot at 7:28 AM on December 1, 2005

I run with my ipod mini with no issues as to playback skipping. I have a velcro armband holder since running with the unit hanging from the waistband of my running shorts is awkward. That said, I don't think that I'd want to run with the full-size 30 gig ipod and they don't make the mini anymore.
posted by octothorpe at 7:29 AM on December 1, 2005

Second bobot.
I have an iPod mini, the armband and run 2 x per week. Have been running for more than a year now and never had any music skip or any other problem.
posted by TheFeatheredMullet at 7:30 AM on December 1, 2005

My first-gen iPod has had plenty of running time. If that clunky box can handle it, the new stuff definitely can.
posted by mkultra at 7:32 AM on December 1, 2005

My husband was forever disenchanted with his 3G 20 gig iPod after it shut down when he ran with it. He blames it on the fact that he weighs 215 lbs and hits the ground harder than lighter persons. He then gave it to me and got a shuffle, which he is very happy with.
posted by dual_action at 7:44 AM on December 1, 2005

The trick is to make sure your HDD-based player is attached to your arm/waist/etc firmly so your body is absorbing most of the jolting or flopping around in a loose bag/pocket. My 3rd gen iPod fared well and didn't mind the occasional dropping onto hard dirt trails.
posted by birdherder at 7:46 AM on December 1, 2005

dual_action: a heavy man may hit the grounder harder, but he accelerates towards it at the same rate as a lighter man (give or take small biomechanical effects from the actual action of running), and I suspect the greater force means there's more compression of a heavier man, meaning there'd actually have been smaller forces acting on the iPod than otherwise since it decelerates over a greater distance.

Certainly to a first approximation it shouldn't make any difference, unless he was in the habit of taping the iPod to the sole of his shoe.
posted by edd at 7:59 AM on December 1, 2005

I had issues running with my iPod - I didn't have the arm-band however. It sounds like that may be the key.

I just use the cheapest flash player I could find - it holds well over an hour of music, I don't care if I drop/break it and it never skips or stops.
posted by soplerfo at 8:03 AM on December 1, 2005

unless he was in the habit of taping the iPod to the sole of his shoe.

Haha!

I usually run with my shuffle, but I've run with my 60gb iPod photo a few times with no problems. A friend with a 3G says his regularly freezes up when he runs.

I did have problems riding my motorcycle with my iPod in the front pocket of my jacket. I'm still not sure if it froze due to the cold (it was about 40 degrees, minus a bunch for the wind chill factor) or due to the road surface. Then again, I've only ridden while listening to my iPod twice, because I prefer to be able to hear traffic, so that's not much of a data point.
posted by cactus at 8:20 AM on December 1, 2005

My girlfriend's 20gig (gen-just-before-photo) iPod freezes up when she runs with it... but she usually keeps it loose in her pocket, so I'm sure it bounces around quite a bit.
posted by antifuse at 8:32 AM on December 1, 2005

How long do you run, and how often while running do you want to switch albums?

soplerfo's advice sounds good.
posted by orthogonality at 8:50 AM on December 1, 2005

edd: I understand what you are talking about and tried to explain it to him, but he is a little, uh, bull-headed about things like this. (He even sent it in for repair but they sent it back.) I keep it on top of my elliptical machine and haven't had a problem at all.
posted by dual_action at 9:30 AM on December 1, 2005

Response by poster: orthogonality writes "How long do you run, and how often while running do you want to switch albums?"

Well, that's the thing. I have a player that holds a bit over an hour of music but I sometimes run for up to 7 hours. (in rare cases up to 3 times that long.) It's actually for those long runs that I am interested in a player as I find that I don't want one as much on shorter runs.

Thanks for all of the advice here.
posted by OmieWise at 10:15 AM on December 1, 2005

I've got an Archos 2.5" drive-based that occasionally skips. It has an adjustable RAM buffer so you can play with the skip frequency. One thing to bear in mind is that if your listening is sequential and playlist based, then a good RAM buffer will read ahead. But if it's entirely random (and not pseudo-random with a fixed "random" playlist every time), then skipping becomes more frequent because the device doesn't know what song is coming next and can't cache as far ahead.

I have mine set to run a chkdsk /x/r/v nightly when it is plugged in to a Windows PC. Although I never notice any major outages, I've been surprised at the frequency of repairs. Every couple of weeks or so there's a relatively minor error that requires fixing up. Once or twice I've found entire FAT tables destroyed, and once all the FAT tables were wiped, presumably during a write error or similar. But that was after several months of running no nightly repairs. I noticed that I was getting unexplained song skips, and the recording would unexpectedly stop. I also started recording a huge increase in bad sectors, up to several MB. A good chkdsk fixed it.

One thing to consider is how frequently your player's OS writes back data to the disk, either as playcounts, dynamic playlists, recently played, or bookmarks. The Archos's OS, Rockbox, is pretty much constantly journaling data to the disk.

So I think that while damage to a disk structure may not be immediately visible, prolonged vibration during reads and writes, and especially writes, can increase the probability of disk failure. You may get away with it for several months and think "Okay", but after a year or so your disk might die.
posted by meehawl at 11:30 AM on December 1, 2005

Okay, nobody else is saying it:

Dude, you run for seven hours? All at once? And sometimes you run for 21 hours straight!?!?
posted by Ian A.T. at 12:43 PM on December 1, 2005

I'm with Ian on this. Time out!!!!!!!

Seriously, when I go for a "long run" that means I run six blocks instead of three. Are you serious about running hours upon hours straight????????

Until we get the answer from this machine from another planet, only then can I think about a simple old earthly mp3 player.

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posted by Independent Scholarship at 1:27 PM on December 1, 2005

(Regarding super-long-distance running, check out this dude.)
posted by Zed_Lopez at 1:34 PM on December 1, 2005

Response by poster: Yeah, I run ultramarathons. I'm not the only MeFite who does, either. I know of at least two others, so it isn't all that strange. A saturday long training run is anywhere from 26-40 miles, nice and slow, and can be up to 7 hours. I've run two hundred mile races and have finished in 22 and 23 hours. Hence the need for a lot of music storage. I know battery life becomes and issue at some point, but I haven't gotten around to parsing that yet.

Zed-L-Karnazes is by all accounts a nice guy, and a decent runner, much much better than I am. He's got a good press agent, though, as his exploits are not particularly impressive for a good ultrarunner. He doesn't even really approach the elite status of some runners.
posted by OmieWise at 1:45 PM on December 1, 2005

Hats off, OmieWise. That's incredibly impressive.

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posted by Independent Scholarship at 2:45 PM on December 1, 2005

Oh yeah, I totally didn't mean to sound weird about it or anything! I think it's awesome.

(And to think I just got done running one of my two weekly "long days"...a measly hour.) (Also, before your clarification, I was naively going to espouse on the joys of running without headphones. Ha! If I were running for seven hours at a time, I'd bring a TV along, much less an iPod.)

Finally: meehaul has a good and thoughtful answer up above, just before me and Independent Scholarship had our derailing freakouts.
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:09 PM on December 1, 2005

Not to derail or anything, but holy crap, OmieWise! That's damn impressive! (You, too, you silent MeFi LD runners)
posted by mkultra at 9:14 AM on December 2, 2005

My 3rd generation 20 gig ipod also had issues (it would stop playing halfway through the run, requiring a restart). I wore it clipped to the center of my waist. I run with a shuffle now (I use the lanyard under my shirt to keep it from bouncing around).

Battery life isn't so hot for ipods. You might consider keeping a few fully-stocked shuffles in your pocket and switching them out when the batteries drain. That doesn't save you money though.

I'm waiting for a flash-based player built into headphones to eliminate wires altogether (my biggest issue with music players/running). I've seen some cheap, ugly small-capacity players like this, but nothing decent.
posted by jessemellon at 11:23 AM on December 2, 2005

Nike and Apple have teamed up to bring you Nike Plus, an attachment for your iPod that tracks your speed, distance, etc. if you buy the Nike shoes with the chip in them.
posted by Frank Grimes at 5:51 PM on May 23, 2006

Response by poster: Yeah, I saw that, crazy.

I ended up with a HD based iPod and I've had no problems with skipping or anything like that.
posted by OmieWise at 7:26 AM on May 24, 2006

Response by poster: Oh, and I've gotten really good battery times ~6 hrs.
posted by OmieWise at 7:26 AM on May 24, 2006