Firewire to USB

October 24, 2011 2:33 AM

While reading the iPod anniversary post, I remembered that I had a 2nd-gen iPod tucked away. It only has a Firewire port. My Macbook is long retired. If I buy a Firewire to USB adapter, will I be able to use the iPod as a hard disk? (And get the music files off it?) Will it charge the iPod? What is the best adapter (or brand) to buy?

There is a related AskMe here, but it's from 2005 & doesn't really help.

posted by chavenet to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

If you do get the Firewire/USB adapter to work, you'll need a program to take the music off of the iPod (to prevent piracy, Apple made it hard to transfer files from an iPod to a computer). I heartily recommend Music Rescue, which is available for a nominal fee but worth every penny (or pence/euro/kroner/whatever).
posted by kuanes at 4:18 AM on October 24, 2011

Also, current Ubuntu releases will work fine with iPods of this era IIRC, so you could always boot a LiveCD & use that to copy the music off the iPod, assuming you can find a suitable cable.
posted by pharm at 5:30 AM on October 24, 2011

There is no such thing as a FireWire to USB cable. The standards are too different. Most macs though, with the exception of the unibody MacBooks, (not MacBook pros) have at least a FireWire 800 port. FireWire 400 to FireWire 800 cables are widely available.
posted by rockindata at 5:40 AM on October 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

rockindata has it -- there's no cable-based path that goes from firewire to USB.
posted by mosk at 6:06 AM on October 24, 2011

Adding to rockindata and mosk ––

You will probably find cables that say USB and Firewire. They don't convert, they're just separate passthroughs.

My 2nd gen iPod works just fine as both a hard drive and a music player with any computer.
posted by mhz at 6:34 AM on October 24, 2011

While there's no firewire-to-USB cable, the iPods of that era could use a custom Apple cable that had both Firewire and USB pigtails on the end. My wife's 2nd-gen came with a pure Firewire plug. We paid a few bucks extra to get a cable that also offered USB. The iPod would talk either protocol depending on which connector you plugged in.
posted by introp at 7:50 AM on October 24, 2011

I was at an Apple Store genius bar a couple of months ago, and the fellow next to me had brought in a 1st gen iPod which had sent to Apple for repair; after he got it back, it worked for a week or two and then failed again so he brought it to the store.

The Apple tech went to hook the iPod up to their diagnostic tools, only to realize (after digging through the back room and consulting with all of the other geniuses) that they did not have any machines in the store capable connecting to the thing. They wound up just giving him a refurbed, much newer model iPod classic.

So... not a direct answer, but Apple themselves seem to have decided that it's not worth the trouble from a service standpoint.
posted by usonian at 8:16 AM on October 24, 2011

On top of that, if it was originally synced to a mac, the iPod is probably HFS formatted, meaning it won't be able to be read under windows.

Best idea: Find a friend with a mac who you can impose on for a bit to run Music Rescue.
posted by Oktober at 12:39 PM on October 24, 2011