Modding please help with a 1G iPod mod

Hi.

I, so far, have avoided buying (another) iPod since my old 2002 5GB 1st generation model was stolen, for obvious reasons (they're more common than... people these days), and have decided that I will only own another 1st generation iPod or nothing, for the retro appeal and nostalgic value.

Now, that is to become a reality- My sister just bought a 5G iPod or whatever and is giving me her old 1G. i'm already planning to replace the battery with a newer one (even though hers, even at 4 years of age, has a battery life of at least 6 hours...), and I would also like to replace the hard drive for a bigger, healthier one if possible. Now, I know the 1st generation used hard drives different to those in later models, but I would really like to know if a 20GB toshiba MK2004GAL HDD (apparently found in 3 and 4G iPods) would work, mainly because some guy on ebay is trying to sell me one. Obviously if I buy it and it doesn't work, I cant send it back to him since he's not doing anything wrong and hasn't misled me with the item description, but he seems to think it might work in a 1G.

So, does anyone know? I have seen the 300GB 3.5 inch ATA HDD used in an iPod featured on hackaday.com, so i dont see why a similar 1.8 inch HDD wouldn't work in an iPod, but I have found no evidence on the internet saying categorically that it will so I figured I'd ask some more experienced modders for their opinions. To be honest, though I am not new to modding, I am new to iPods and HDD's and also there's £50/$ lots on the line, and I am a student so I can't exactly waste the money by buying it only to find it doesnt work, as I'm sure you can understand.

Thanks for reading (if you got this far) and also thanks in advance to anyone with any info they'd like to share.

Cheers,
Neema

 

Hello there neema_t and welcome to the forums. I have a little expierience with the iPod's so maybe I can be of some help. Is it possible that you can open your iPod and take some pictures of the HDD used by the 1g iPod. The info on the internet often can be misleading or incorrect. I recently interfaced a 3g 15gb iPod HDD with my pc and know a little bit about how the iPod operates.

Mainly to know if its the same can you get pictures of the HDD in the iPod mainly the top sticker with all its info. And even more importantly the connector used to interface to the iPod. This can help tremendously in figuring out which HDD's will actually operate in different iPod's

Now the last thing I just want you to be aware of, is that you are giong to have to prepare the new HDD to be used in the iPod. This can be somewhat tricky as you will need to setup IIRC three partitions on the drive 1) A partition map 2) Apple OS / Firmware 3) Storage.

The thread over here about getting a new hd to work with the 3g iPod can be helpful espeically where preparing the drive is mentioned. Hope this helps: http://www.command-tab.com/2005/03/13/ipod-super/

 

Thanks for the reply, however unfortunately I don't have the iPod to hand, and possibly won't until November.

Having read around various places, it seems to me that all iPods use the same interface with the hard disk, that is the ones that use hard disks and not microdrives or flash memory. I believe it is known as AT, like ATA but smaller, though I only read that in passing.

I have found articles such as http://www.axel-findling.de/ipod.html, http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?t=167585 and the one you pointed out where people have used larger hard disks in their iPods so I don't feel that physically connecting the iPod is the problem, the real problem lies with formatting since I don't own a linux PC (though if I remember correctly, linux is unix, as is OSX which is what I use) and I have no knowledge of Unix or command line terminals (though OSX does have a terminal) or anything like that, so I would be at a complete loss when it comes to formatting the hard disk.

The method I would have used would be to get a 1.8 inch hard disk case with USB, and after making a disk image of the 5gb iPod, I would connect up the newer one with the case and 'restore' it with the image from the 5gb, then physically swap the hard disks over. However, while I have used this sort of thing with CD's and DVD's, I have never done it with entire hard disks, except for once, but that was a simple case of making a firewire drive act like an OS dvd, and iPods are far more complex in their formatting, since they have the three partitions as you pointed out.

And I have also read that using non-apple branded hard disks limits the interface to USB only, which is something 1 and 2G iPods never had, so to update my music I would have to dismantle my iPod every time... but then, if that would let me carry all of my music around at once, thats something I could live with.

So really, my main question is:
"How would I format a disk to be readable both in the iPod and by the mac i plug it into without complicated linux commands, of which i have absolutely no knowledge of?"
or
"Can someone please explain this http://www.axel-findling.de/ipod.html in such a way that someone with OSX and no knowledge of a single thing explained on that page could understand?"

Also, Warrior_Rocker, I read about your iPod HDD to PC interface, its quite interesting, though I won't lie to you, I didn't understand all that much of the technical detail, but I follow the basic idea... If the iPod HDD interface is the same as compactflash, I wouldnt mind using the old (maybe) 5gb HDD as a storage device for my DSLR... I hear Belkin have already made something like that, though.

Thanks for the reply, and sorry if this post is confusing, I tend to ramble when i'm tired.

 

Contrary to popular belief and speculation the iPod HDD is NOT cf in any way, it is signal compatable, meaning you can wire each pin of the iPod's HDD connector to match with the correct pin on the cf card, the two do not share the same pin numbers and pin orders. Why? who knows. If you plug your iPod HDD into anything but the correct adapter or something meant for CF you will likely fry the device and the HDD.

It seems that if you could use a linux live cd you could get all the advanced formatting tools, I have no experience with unix based as the apple os. But if you have access to a PC or find a linux distro for yours you could try that.

 

Oh... Maybe i'm more tired than I thought... To be fair though, I wasn't about to go and plug a HDD straight into my camera. it wouldn't fit anyway.

I'll look around more and see what I can find in regard to the formatting of a newer, bigger HDD, and i'll post my findings here (if there are any), but not now since I have to sleep.

Thanks for your help, and I also forgot to thank you for the welcome in my haste to post a load of incoherent words, so, thank you for that too.

 

I have a 2G iPod at work that I could crack open. With any luck, the insides are similar to that of the 1G iPod. Without opening and checking, I'm relatively sure that a newer hard drive (like a 30 or 40 GB) should work in the 1G iPod, barring any software limitations. I'll look into it more at the beginning of this coming week.