[pheonixash]

Hi guys,

I recently purchased a 5G Video iPod, which I sync with my MacBook. Part of my reason for going for the 30 GB in lieu of the 8 GB Nano was that I could also use it as a portable hard drive to transfer files on campus. However, my iPod is Mac formatted, and most of my friend's use Windows based machines, which cannot read a Mac formatted iPod (well not out of the box anyway, maybe some software could enable that functionality).

So my question basically is, can i re-format my iPod to a Windows format and continue to use it with the MacBook. I will primarily use this machine to manage the iPod, in the sense that firmware updates and the likes will be installed from it. Will there be a performance hit? Even USB 2.0 takes a long time to sync my entire library, so if FAT 32 is slow by a huge margin, I might just continue using the Mac format.

Or is there anything I can do to allow a Windows machine to read the Mac formatted iPods?

TIA

[motionMan]

I also wanted to use my 5G ipod as a portable HDD to windows based machines, but as you mentioned there are limitations. In my experience, you can format the ipod to fat32 (using iTunes for windows) and then use it with your Mac, but it is significantly slower, both mounting and transfer (at least on my PB G4 1.25GHz). Other downside is you have to use iTunes for Windows to do firmware updates, at least pre-iTunes 7.

The other option is to use something like MacDrive by MediaFour. I haven't personally used it but heard it works well, but since you have to install it on any windows machine you hope to use your Mac (HFS) formated iPod with, it's not the most elegant solution. Unless you have admin access to every machine, or REALLY trusting friends.

Simple Answers:

1) Yes, you can format your 5th Gen iPod for Windows (in windows) and use it with your MacBook
2) Yes, there is (was) a performace hit by doing it the above mentioned way, though perhaps not as great on your MacBook as on my PowerBook G4
3) Yes, there is software to let you use your Mac formatted iPod with windows

[tonton]

I'm one of the people who reformatted my Mac iPod so that I could use it to move files from/to a PC.

I'm sorry I did it. I should have just gotten a USB stick.

Not only is performance slower, the iPod shows up on the Mac desktop with an ugly all caps name, but the most important thing...

With my Mac formatted 3G iPod I could eject it from iTunes or the finder, then my iPod would display the main screen and I could play my music while charging from my Mac's firewire port. With the Windows formatted iPod -- I can't.

You just get that annoying "OK to Disconnect" and there's no way to see the main menu on the iPod, play any music or do anything with it while it charges.

[Nivag]

The other downsize of using a FAT32 drive between the two platforms is it has a 4GB file size limit. While most people wont be troubled by this, it'll mean you wont be able to transfer large files across, such as DVD rips as an example.