4th gen ipods run on mac and pc??

sUICIDE_mONKEY

sUICIDE_mONKEY

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So my 40gig ipod came on friday... yays it great, my last one was a 10 gig 2nd gen.
I want to use it as a hard drive to transfer files from the pc's in uni to my mac at home... it came with a usb cable in the box, so can i just connect it to a pc tomorrow and transfer my files?

Oh and any sugestions on a name for it, my last one was called icebox...
 
No.

iPods function on both PCs and Macs, but they have to be formatted for the file system they'll be used by: either Mac or PC. The hardware is the same, but you have to have it formatted to what you need.

It's possible to format it to NTFS (what happens when you format it to PC) since both Macs and PCs can read NTFS volumes, but then I'll hazard a guess that it'll be much slower on your Mac, if iTunes still recognises it as an iPod.

Sorry, it's not very good for cross-platform file transferring; think of it as a Hard Drive, you can't put a Mac HDD in a PC and copy files back across from it, despite the two hard drives being identical hardware-wise.
 
texanpenguin said:
It's possible to format it to NTFS (what happens when you format it to PC) since both Macs and PCs can read NTFS volumes, but then I'll hazard a guess that it'll be much slower on your Mac, if iTunes still recognises it as an iPod.
Click to expand...
NTFS is READ ONLY on the Mac. So the file transfer could only be from the PC to the Mac and not vice-versa. FAT 32, on the other hand, is read/write on both the PC and the Mac. Now whether the iPod formatted FAT 32 would still be able to synch the Mac's iCal, AddressBook, iTunes, etc. or not is an open question I do not have the answer to.
 
My mistake; the perfessor is correct. I don't think the iPod software allows you to format the iPod (and install its OS) onto FAT32, so I don't think you're in any sort of luck unless you get MacDisk or something for the PCs to let them run HFS+ Volumes. I don't think you have the privileges to do that on your Uni computers though, :p.

The iPod is very capable of transferring files from Macs (OS 9 included) to my PowerBook - it's even easier than Wireless for that, IMO.
 
ah well, was worth a try... and nope dont have privileges to get any software/drivers installed but i think i can fill in a form to request it, and they will consider it but since there are probably few mac users in my uni they prob. wouldnt anyway.....
 
I use a 256 mb CF card in a USB card reader adapter
to transfer files back and forth between my mac
and my windows box.

I know 256 mb is much smaller than 40 gigs,
but it works great for my needs.
 
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