[glennmac]

Is there any downside to using the iPod as your primary backup medium?

I realize it is limited to 5gb, so my question is not about capacity. I'm looking at the VST 5gb Firefly drive at about $300, and various compact CD burners at about the same price. It just seems that for $100 more, I can get all the iPod's music abilities. Am I losing something, functionwise, by choosing the iPod over a small hard drive?

[Apple Pro Underwear]

hi, i've been advocating on these forums on how great the ipod is for firewire storage solutions. it feels like i'm the only one....

but i know i'm not. i'm a graphic designer and i use it to store some of my freelance projects. it works great. i work right off it and has been incredibly reliable to me. i love this thing.

i leave a gig and half free for my files and the rest for music. (by the way it's been like amonth and i still haven't listened to all of the music on my ipod).

I've never used it to boot up though, to be honest i don't know how.

[SOLIDAge]

Can you boot classic from the firewire device/iPod?
please let me know i'm trying to run classic off my firewire drive, but cant

[Paco500]

The only downside I can see to using the iPod as a backup device is the wear on the drive mechanism. There are UNCONFIRMED reports that the drives fail pretty quickly under a heavy load. I doubt this story is true- and if it has a grain of truth, it's most likely not universal.

That being said, hard drives (and lots of other computer stuff) are given a mean time to failure rating, which basically says how many house the drive should run before dying. All drives die eventually. Using it a lot will most likely cause it to die faster.

Paco