Has anyone ever taken the original hard drive out of their ipod and connected it to a larger one? Or copied the original to a differnt hard drive? I was thinking of copying over whatever configuration files and operating system from original ipod hard drive to a much larger one. I can then power the hard drive and put an ipod connector on it and leave it stashed in the car with the connector handy. I think the car only needs how the menu works and where the files are, not all the interface stuff. More music can be added by bringing a laptop into the car. It would be similar to the music box but much larger and better quality.

 

I think you are the first on this site to think or try doing something like this. Good luck if you try this.

 

You may have issues as there is no current way to get an open source driver to work with the ipod. The ipods usb driver is proprietary and hasn't been cracked yet. A budy of mine was trying to make a device based on linux kernal to work with the ipod, but has ran into a brick wall as the ipod interface is very proprietary. File access may not be available, only playback.

Don't know if that rambling helps.

try googling ipod linux or go to ipodlounge.com


also note that the operating system for the ipods resides on a chip(firmware) not the hd. There may be some files related to track info and such, but system files are firmware.

 

Thanks for the reply. I was thinking more of copying an image of the original hard drive to a new larger one. I am pretty sure some wiring and soldering would have to be done according to pinouts for a 3.5'' hard drive. I have read that ipods have their hard drive partitioned into three parts. The firist is a map of the rest of the partions and a mounting system to actually mount the drive to a computer, the second is the firmware and probably all of the menu setup ect., and the third is where the files are stored. If it is true that the config files for various menus ect. are not on the hard drive and on a seperate ram chip this would not work. It would become much more complicated and would be easier to just buy an ipod with broken hard drive and replace with a larger one.