The iPod as an External Hard Disk
To set up the iPod as an external hard disk, you don’t have to jump through complicated technical hoops. The days of installing disk drivers, fiddling with jumper switches, SCSI-chain termination, and IRQ settings are long gone.
Note
Even though they’re tiny in comparison, the flash-memory iPod Shuffles can get into the external drive game, too. Flip back to page 77 for the details on turning your Shuffle into a USB flash drive.
In iTunes for both the Mac and Windows systems, just follow the steps in Figure 12-1 to turn that simple music player into a music player and a portable hard drive for all your ginormous file-toting needs. (The look of this Preferences box may vary slightly, depending on which version of iTunes you’re using.)
Note
If you’ve disabled automatic synchronization (page 46), you may notice that the option to turn on the FireWire mode is dimmed out. That’s because switching the iPod to manual-update mode also enables the external disk mode, whether you like it or not.
If you don’t want the external disk option turned on, turn off the button for manual updates, and then turn on either “Automatically update all songs and playlists” or “Automatically update selected playlists only” instead. Be warned, though, that shifting back to automatic will allow iTunes to replace the contents of the iPod with whatever is in the library of the computer you’re connected to, and any songs you’ve manually added from other machines will disappear.