[volcano]

Alright, here's the deal:

I'm in a multitude of different multimedia classes right now - where I get assignments in class, work on them in class, and take them home with me in order to complete them. Obviously, I needed an external drive to do this task - so I bought a 512MB flash drive from the get-go. Then I started thinking: what about my iPod? I thought it was a great idea, at first. But now whenever I come home and re-sync my iPod to my main computer (iMac G5), I have to re-transfer nearly half of my songs that were once on my iPod... which comes to nearly 2000! I typically have around 4000 on my iPod at any given time.

My iPod only comes in contact with other Macs at school (iMac G5s and PowerMac G5s) and my iBook G4.

Is there anyway to prevent this from happening? Like I said - it doesn't wipe all of my music, just about half of it. Whenever I connect it to any other Mac, I tell it to manually sync it to the computer so it doesn't wipe it completely or I just close iTunes.

[Big Mac]

When you iPod is connected to your Mac, click on the iPod preferences button in iTunes and change the preference from automatic synch to manual. You'll have to drag your music and playlists over manually to update them, but your iPod's music will no longer get wiped when it's on a different account or Mac.

[hickey]

depending on which ipod you have, I think you have to enable "Disk Use" under the preferences pane.

[Big Mac]

It's good you noted that, hickey. Also, when the iPod is set to manual synch Disk Mode stays on, so the iPod has to be unmounted (ejected) before it is disconnected.

[Copernicus]

Hrm...I've actually wondered about this. Is there any risk involved in using the iPod as an external storage device? Cause I often can't fill my iPod completely with quality music (finding good stuff is hard to do these days), so I've usually got some extra space.

[Big Mac]

There's no real risk in using the iPod for regular storage - it's a feature of device. The only possible risk is that some say the iPod isn't designed for constant, prolonged use of the disk (if you use it as a startup disk for an extended period, for example). But for additional storage there's no reason not to use it.