Solid state iPod

2009-07-21 13:07

My 4th-gen iPod’s drive died, and I’d rather improve upon it than buy a new player.

I used this adapter from DealExtreme, bought a cheap CompactFlash card from Newegg, and even got a new battery while I was at it.

A fourth-generation iPod opened up face down, showing a 32GB CompactFlash card installed in an adapter in place of the normal Toshiba hard disk.

The iPod is unnervingly light once freed of its hard drive. After formatting the new drive, iTunes was able to initialize iPod and use it as normal. Others reported having to dd an existing iPod partition table to the CF card, but mine Just Worked. My formerly-40GB iPod has a thicker back plate than its 20GB sister, and the CF card rattles around the big empty case when not padded with a little stuffing material. Several Apple repair online stores sell the thinner 20GB back plate, but they’re all so expensive it’s not worth it.