Comments on: iPod 5G Hard Drives

By: Neil

Neil — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:32:18 +0000

I have a 30 Gb 5G iPod Video, and was wondering about upgrading to an 80Gb hard drive/battery and rear case.

I have been told that some of the earlier 5G logic boards can’t support the 80Gb Hdd. Any one know if this is true, and if it is how to identify if my board will support 80Gb or not.

Neil

By: Husam

Husam — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:52:35 +0000

Hello,
First of all, thank you for providing me with the above information. However, I’m interested in connecting my iPod HD to my PC through USB. Sounds silly, but my iPod, well, let’s just say that the Hard disk is the only thing that works, and I need to make some use of it. Does anyone has any info related to this? A DIY would be better. Thank you,

By: n00ner

n00ner — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:09:01 +0000

I bought a Seagate ST760211DE 60GB. My original drive was 30GB.
All I get is the “dead” iPod symbol. Anything I missed???

EDIT:
If I have it in one mode, I get the “dead” symbol.
If I put it in the other mode, I get “Connect to iTunes…”

When I plug into USB, I get “Please wait. Very low battery”. I’ve left it charging all day. And I even tried a different battery!

By: Collin

Collin — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:28:10 +0000

@poncival From my recent research, I’ve found that that half-width connector on the drive is “CE-ATA”, which is different than ZIF (though I thought they were the same for some time). Apparently the newer (greater than 80 GB) capacity iPod Classics take these CE-ATA drives, but the 5G iPods take ZIF only. I’ve not seen an adapter ribbon cable, so I’m thinking that your best bet is to turn it around and buy a straight ZIF.

By: poncival

poncival — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:50:44 +0000

I just got a Samsung HS161JQ 160 GB 1.8″ hard drive off ebay for $90 and was hoping to stuff it in a 5th gen 30 GB ipod but the connector is about half as wide and has 18 pins, I am hunting for some kind of adapter for it, does anybody have any info on this subject? Thanks in advance

John

By: Sandman

Sandman — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:38:15 +0000

Check out DealExtreme dot com I bought a 1.8″ zif from them. People there say it works. I haven’t been able to make it work for me yet. Still trying things, gonna take the hint of Xplay and see if that helps. Device Manager recognizes the drive, but neither My Computer or Itunes shows it. When you go to disk management its there and says that it needs to be initialized, and fails.

By: patrick

patrick — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:47:29 +0000

Yeah i have one of the first IPOD’s and it has a HITACHI travelstar harddrive in it now my ipod says that it is corrupted and that all i can do is format it to original factory settings but i got 5 1\2 GB of music on there is there any way to buy an adapter ribbon some were or womething like that i could send u a pic or something that might work i am lost here and dont wanna loose all that time and money

By: Señor

Señor — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:41:42 +0000

Doug, you can use 3rd party software like Xplay to explore the ipod as a drive and get your music off that way.

By: Doug

Doug — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:06:03 +0000

I broke my 5th gen. ipod video and was wondering if i could connect the HD to my computer(an HP). Just want to get my music off.

By: Jack Maher

Jack Maher — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:33:24 +0000

I recently bought a 1.8″ ZIF External Enclosure for $30 from this company in Milwaukee, WI. I slipped in a Toshiba 120 GB ZIF HD and use it to hold my iTunes and iPhoto media. Works great and the price was right.

These folks have both 1.8″ IDE and ZIF Enclosures and 1.8″ to 2.5″ IDE Adapters.

http://www.digitalintelligence.com/products/18_hard_drive_enclosures/