[Bubba Jones]

I have
35 gigs of total music
10 gigs of obssevive listen to all the time must always have access music
12"er with 60 gig HD

I recently had my 5gig first generation ipod die on me(total kerplop with pieces). I am loking at the following options.

15 gig ipod $269 (edu) + Various Portable 60-80 gig HD $250-$300
or
40 gig ipod $469 (edu)

Now the dollar to gig comparisons are fairly straight forward.

75-90 gigs=$519-$569 vs. the simple 40 gig for $469

i've thought about this from various angles(above, below, behind), and even tho' the dollars point to the 15 gig+external hd, i would like to go for the 40 gig ipod. i'm a mobile minimalist, less crap the better, and the 40gigs would suit me just fine(speed of drive not that important). My main question is about the durability of the ipod's hard drvie.

If i go with the 40 gig ipod only, that will be my music on the road, my music at home, and a big part of my file transfer/data backup solution. I will have very little if any music left on my 12", i would play any and all music in the house from the ipods hd thru either the pismo, the 12" or thru rca cables, itrip, whatever. thats lots of hard drive spinning. and, i would be fairly often using the ipod to transfer big 4-5 gig chunks of files(fcp project stuff, php, whatever). now i remember when i first got my ipod 2 years ago, people were talking about how great it would be to be able to boot your 'puter off your ipod, but other people were saying that the constant spinning of the hard drive would seriously shorten your ipods life span.

now i realize that scenerio puts a lot more strain on the drive than what i require, but it got me thinking. anywho, any advice, thoughts, input would be greatly appreciated.

oh also, any recommendations on an portable(2.5") external fw harddrive would also be appreciated. i've looked at ones from owc and transintl.

[Minty Fresh]

As with any "moving" part in a computer, or peripheral...it's prone to failure. HDD's can be DOA, die after 2 months, or go years without any problem. There's no way of really knowing. Laptop HDD's, and other portable devices that use a HDD (i.e. the iPod) are more likely to see a problem as well...because of the moving, and bumping that they go through everyday.

For music...or other very important files...even though a backup drive is nice...it's still open to the same problems...so therfore...I put a lot of stuff on CD's. Just in case something goes wrong...and I lose data. I always have a copy locked away. You could have all your music and such on the iPod...but have the reassurance, that if anything went wrong...you'd still have everything.

Even though I have all if not most of all my MP3's on my HDD....I still have them all on CD's too.

[Nebrie]

All hard drives are different. My powerbook HD's SMART has been telling me it's gonna fail for months now. Could be in the next few minutes or years, don't know. The problem is that people want cheap drives rather than those old reliable drives, and thus the situation we have today.

[Cellery]

You can never backup enough, and I burn things to DVD just in case the main and backup hard drives fail. I guess that's the depressing thing about hard drives is that it's a matter of when, not if. The drives used in the iPod are great though- I have a Sony TR2 notebook that uses the same 1.8" Toshiba drive as its main hard drive, and it works solidly 24/7.

[Bubba Jones]

i should probably clarify that i make HARD backups of everything onto dvd-r's. i am a backup freak. the ipod(or ext fw) is for moving large amounts of stuff around. i'm not so concerned about data loss as i am about dollar loss by putting a huge amount of strain on the ipods hd.

thanks for the input so far. i'll probably make a decision by the end of the week, if anybody else chimes in, thanks to you too.

hey cellery(anybody else too i guess) are the current toshiba drives in the ipod, and the one in you sony, the same as the ones in the first ipod?

[Cellery]

As far as I know Apple's always used Toshiba 1.8" drives in the iPod, and the 5GB one in the original iPod could be purchased by itself in a PC Card form factor. So basically it's the same drive, just revised several times for higher capacity and speed. The 40GB drive in my VAIO is the exact same one used in the 40GB iPod, the Toshiba MK4004GAH, and it stays pretty cool and doesn't take as much power to run as a 2.5" drive. Did that answer your question?