what other uses for an ipod?

July 18, 2008 12:18 PM

what can i do with the 80 gbs on a new ipod

thinking about buying an ipod again, the 1gb on my creative nanos kind of getting old with the constant switching around what i want to listen to. plus everyone has a dock at their party and my nano doesnt dock. whatever. the question is, though i like the 8 gb ipod nano, for $50 i can get an 80 gb ipod - is anyone using this for anything other than itunes & video? can i backup my operating system to it, anyone using it for any mobile apps, maybe copy & carry around a virtual machine?

posted by fumbducker to Technology (15 answers total)

Put wikipedia on it. Never lose trivia night at your pub again.
posted by JimmyJames at 12:28 PM on July 18, 2008 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: nice jimjim!
posted by fumbducker at 12:31 PM on July 18, 2008

for $50 you can get an 80 gig iPod? Five-Oh, fifty? Is this used? Does she have a sister? I'd like one, too, please? I have close to 300Gb of music digitally stored and only a 2Gb iPod (keeps me busy making new playlists, so there's that).

I have never tried to put anything on my iPod that wasn't a media file, so I'm not sure, but I know that for $80 you can get a portable USB 150 to 250 gb HD that might be more suited to the virtual machine idea. In fact I have one I'd gladly swap for an 80 gig iPod.
posted by beelzbubba at 1:00 PM on July 18, 2008

Maybe the OP meant $50 more?
posted by AwkwardPause at 1:02 PM on July 18, 2008

Best answer: Kottke's 50 Fun Things To Do With Your iPod
posted by phrayzee at 1:12 PM on July 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

After checking that Wikipedia-on-iPod link, it looks like it won't work on the current, 6th gen. iPod Classics because the required iPod Linux OS isn't supported.
posted by phrayzee at 1:18 PM on July 18, 2008

Go onto free ItunesU and download videos of all the classes you wish you took in college.
posted by chrisalbon at 1:27 PM on July 18, 2008

I used my 80gig not only carry my complete music collection with me, but as a reason to get more music. It also served as a portable hard drive and backup of important files, such as my entire iPhoto collection

Can't remember where I read it, but I think the hard drive speed is too slow to run and OS.

Mostly though, it was nice to have the option to grab pretty much anything from anywhere. Were I to get another one, I'd seriously consider getting a 160gig, 'cause having all that space in your pocket is amazing.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:53 PM on July 18, 2008

here is a wikipedia-to-ipod thing that does not require a different OS, because it stores the articles as notes on the ipod.
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 1:56 PM on July 18, 2008

I have all my photos on my mp3 player. It's turned out to be surprisingly useful. I can't even give you an example of when or why or how it's been useful, it's just that every few months I seem to find myself thinking "huh - having all that stuff with me on the mp3 player has saved the day again!"

You might want to look into encryption options though - I also have sensitive stuff like bank info and correspondence on there, and small things like mp3 players can go missing or get stolen.
posted by -harlequin- at 2:35 PM on July 18, 2008

Best answer: It's an 80 GB USB hard drive, with extras. It's a little bit different if it's an iPod formatted for Windows or Mac, but basically when you set it up, there is a slider allowing you to choose X GB for music and Y GB for data, your choice, and it shouldn't be too hard to change that later as you get more music, etc.
On that Y GB for data, you can put just about anything you could put on a USB hard drive: files, apps, backups, etc. (if you want to boot from it, there is another layer of complexity you might not want to bother with). Assuming you can carry around a USB connector cord, you can carry around whatever will fit in the data partition and get at your data as if it were a USB HD or flash drive.

If you use Windows, check out PortableApps. Put 'em on your data partition, plug the iPod into a running, logged-in Windows PC, and you can run those programs from the iPod without leaving anything behind on the Windows machine.
posted by bartleby at 2:40 PM on July 18, 2008

I'm not sure about the SPEED of the hard drive being unsuitable for running an OS (doesn't the Macbook Air use the same HD?), but I think the heat involved is unhealthy for the iPod. However, I think that only holds for using it continuously. There's a long tradition of using the iPod as an emergency startup disk for Macintoshes, and USB iPods work great for booting Intel Macs.

That being said, any use for a portable hard drive is a good use for an iPod. The suggestion above for Portable Apps is great if you use Windows. Encryption has gotten a whole lot easier since Truecrypt now has Windows, Mac and Linux versions. I'm not sure about that advice from Bartleby about a portion for music and a portion for data, though; I don't remember ever having to do that when setting up an iPod; just turn Disk Mode on in iTunes and you're in business.
posted by lhauser at 4:42 PM on July 18, 2008

before the discussion continues...an ipod cant be used to load mac os X because an external hard drive needs to be at least fire wire
posted by The1andonly at 8:23 PM on July 18, 2008

The1andonly: Actually, that is only true for PowerPC Macs. Intel-based Macs can boot from both Firewire and USB.
posted by phrayzee at 8:34 PM on July 18, 2008

Response by poster: thanks everyone. i meant 50 more dollars. i think ive been convinced, especially backing up my iphoto library & portable apps.
posted by fumbducker at 7:12 AM on July 20, 2008