[xe0]

I have a 20BG internal ATA drive which I have converted to firewire drive.
I use as it as my portable. I work directly off the Firewire drive doing heavy photoshop, quark and illustrator work. I store all my work in this one central location- and together with a solid back-up regime, this external ATA/Firewire drive works well.

However, although the speed and reliability is excellent- one thing is not. The fact that I must use a power outlet, firewire cable along with the unit itself- is proving very cumbersome. Couple this with the fact that ATA drives are inherently delicate and prone to corruption (bad sectors) when in transit and I find myself looking for a better solution.

So Im looking very seriously at an iPod as a replacement. But after some research it appears this is not a valid solution.
The information regarding the iPod's internal drive speed and transfer rates etc, is quite scarce- but from what little I have read the internal Microdrive doesn't read like a regular drive. That is to say it reads and writes sporadically. Apparently it is designed for short bursts of read and write tasks; which is tremendous for an MP3 player, but unfortunately useless as an portable drive for my needs. Therefore I can assume that storing my work on the iPod should work ok, but working directly off the iPod is not posable.

Then there's the battery issue which Im a little surprised to read about? Again going off information Ive read: the Lithium Ion battery within the iPod only lasts approximately 1-3 years of sustained use. This is crazy... I was under the impression that the iPod was not a disposable item? And for the price (Australian Dollar $449.00 15GB) I expect a better energy solution... especially from Apple? Also when the Microdrive is in constant use it heats up- which drains the battery further. So basically I don't know enough about the iPod to make a sound decision. To be quite honest I really want one, but I cant justify it in my mind when I find information such as the above.


At anyrate, my iPod purchase is on hold until I can clarify these issues.
what I am after from you good people is some information!
To all the iPod users out there, can anyone answer these three questions?

1) Do you use your iPod as an external Hard drive- and work directly off the iPod?
2) As an external hard drive, what on average is the transfer rate of a Firewire equipped iPod? (real-world or benchmarks)
3) When connected to the Dock, does the Firewire cable provide power to the iPod directly? or does it simply charge the internal battery?

Thx in advance guys

[GORDYmac]

1) Do you use your iPod as an external Hard drive- and work directly off the iPod?
Yes. When I take photos while traveling, I store them on my iPod. As I review them back at the hotel, I view/edit in Photoshop directly from the iPod.

2) As an external hard drive, what on average is the transfer rate of a Firewire equipped iPod? (real-world or benchmarks)
Since hard drives transfer faster than FireWire, this isn't really a big issue IMO. When transferring 1GB of photos from the iPod to my G4 at home, while not instantaneous, the transfers are faster than transferring photos from a 1GB Compact Flash card reader. I don't have actual benchmarks, but I do believe the FireWire interface would be the bottleneck here, not the drive.

3) When connected to the Dock, does the Firewire cable provide power to the iPod directly? or does it simply charge the internal battery?
Both. When the battery is fully charged, the icon at the top of the iPod screen stops the animation it uses to note that its charging. Charging the battery isn't power consuming, so the 30V from the FireWire bus easily handles both functions.

BTW, I have one of the original 5GB iPods. Only in the last month have I noticed dimished battery quality. Replacement batteries can now be had for around $35 (US), so I don't consider that a bum deal. As iPods age, and demand increases, I think the prices will come down significantly. Nothing lasts forever. Over the weekend, my APC UPS started indicating that its battery needs replacing.

[funkboy]

Originally posted by GORDYmac:
...I do believe the FireWire interface would be the bottleneck here, not the drive.

I do not own an iPod, but I'm pretty sure that's incorrect. Most hard drives cannot saturate their own bandwidth, and probably not Firewire, either. An ATA/100 drive, for instance, ideally runs at 100MBps. However, have you tried to copy 1GB from one drive to another? Probably took longer than 10 seconds.

Firewire runs at 400Mbps (note, Megabits, not Megabytes: 8 bits = 1 byte), which equates to 50MB / sec. I suppose that possibly, under the most ideal of ideal situations, and if the hard drive was fast enough, the Firewire may be limiting it... but I severely doubt it.

I'm pretty sure the hard drive limits speed, not the firewire... anyone else confirm this?
And no, I have not seen any specs on how actually fast the hard drive is... however, from Apple's website:

iPod and iPod mini transfer an entire CD in as little as ten seconds.

I think they're talking about 160Kbps MP3s or AACs here, so that would equate to... hmm... let's say they're stored at 1.2MB/sec, and 60 minutes on a CD... that would be 72MB in ten seconds, so transfer speed would be 7.2MB / sec, well below the limit of Firewire.