[Don Pickett]

For long period of time? I moved all my mp3s to my iPod, and keep it plugged in like a hard drive. The sucker gets warm, tho: normal, or should I stop doing this?

[icruise]

It seems that the iPod's hard disk spins all (or a lot) of the time when it is plugged into the computer, which seems to cause the heat. I don't know that it is actually harmful, though. It might shorten the life of the hard disk, but I have no idea whether it would be a significant amount or not. Apple doesn't support use of the iPod as a startup drive, and some speculated that it was for this kind of reason. I personally wouldn't put my only copy of my MP3s on my iPod, just for fear of losing them through a bad software update, software glich or whatever.

[Don Pickett]

Originally posted by Icruise:
It seems that the iPod's hard disk spins all (or a lot) of the time when it is plugged into the computer, which seems to cause the heat. I don't know that it is actually harmful, though. It might shorten the life of the hard disk, but I have no idea whether it would be a significant amount or not. Apple doesn't support use of the iPod as a startup drive, and some speculated that it was for this kind of reason. I personally wouldn't put my only copy of my MP3s on my iPod, just for fear of losing them through a bad software update, software glich or whatever.

I'm not worried about losing the mp3s - almost all of them are from CDs I own. I'm just worried about the iPod.

[icruise]

I own the CDs for my music too, but it would take days to rerip everything. In any case, after giving it a little more though I doubt that it would really be much of a problem. There are several laptops (at least in Japan) that use the same 1.8" drives that are in the ipod as their main hard disks. I wouldn't think that keeping the ipod plugged in would be harder on the disk than that.

[scaught]

if your computer goes to sleep and you wake it up, your ipod will go through another charging cycle. thats the only bad thing i can think of.