Nerd by day, musicican by night

February 17, 2006 5:21 PM

Can I use an iPod Shuffle as a normal thumbdrive in Linux and a music player in Windows?

I've been wanting to get a USB thumbdrive to transfer files, and it appears that the iPod Shuffle (with a very attractive edu pricing) is just a glorified thumbdrive. Now, I'm wondering if I could store music on the Shuffle from my Windows machine at home with iTunes and still transfer files to it from my Linux workstation at the lab. Anyone with experience on this? Thanks!

posted by reformedjerk to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: Absolutely. You could even copy music to it in linux with some of the iPod DB rebuilders out there.
posted by mr.dan at 5:22 PM on February 17, 2006

It's a little bit more than a glorified thumb drive. My thumb drive can't play music. ;-)

But yes, this will work. Enable disk mode on your iPod (or in Linux, just plug it in). It's a USB mass storage device.
posted by teece at 5:52 PM on February 17, 2006

It's not a great thumb drive (it won't fit in some USB ports; it's too wide), and it's not a great MP3 player (the sound is awful, controls are poor, and the random shuffle mode is only random once per sync). But if it's really cheap, it may do what you need.
posted by scruss at 4:12 AM on February 18, 2006