200gb Hack for iPod Nano

romka1 writes "For people who think their Nano doesn't have enought space for their music there is a hack walkthrough to get 200 gigs on your Nano. Warning some assembly required" For some reason this tickled my funny bone this morning. Enjoy.

Comments

Yup...

[rovingeyes]

funny how I felt the same way when I read it on a lazy Thursday afternoon.

Re:Yup...

[Doctor Memory]

Me too, when I submitted it a week ago....

  Ipod Nano 200GB mod 16:57 Wednesday 05 October 2005 Rejected

Re:Yup...

[Zeph]

Not to mention, it was discussed in a sub-thread 1-2 weeks ago, which is just as much coverage of this sort of (admittedly entertaining) news deserves. I'd go and find it, but I've wasted enough time with this article already.

Re:Yup...

[Pharmboy]

You've got to admit, this is borderline "news".

I would respectfully disagree. "News for Nerds", to me, includes How-To articles. The fact that the modification has no practical application is not important, since few would attempt it even if it did. It DOES however, jar some imaginations, and gets people thinking about how things work. I won't do this mod, but I didn't know how easy it was to hack an IPod before this article.

What it DOES show, is that the guy who did this was pretty damn smart and also had a good sense of humor. Then again, I'm working on an underwater camera fishing rig, so impractical but real How-To articles appeal to me. I was going to use a stun gun mounted to the camera, but I think that's illegal here in NC. (Really, not making it up)

I say we have MORE articles were people use technology and know-how in unusual, if impractical, applications. With all the dupes, there is obviously room to fit it on the front page. ;)

Only 200GB?

[Yocto Yotta]

Why stop at 200GB? You could use a 500GB drive and have 150% additional capacity with zero gain in size. I'm a little disappointed that the nano cases won't quite fit anymore though. As the article states though, this is one mod any nano owner cannot do without.

Re:Only 200GB?

[Ford Prefect]

One of my aims in life has been to construct a properly redundant RAID array of inexpensive disks - namely, floppy disks!

Floppy drives are really cheap at the moment, so it shouldn't be too difficult to build up a decent amount of storage. Also, it should be possible to build a custom interface so that the whole assembly can be connected to one of these modern iPod things - I'm guessing you could add several hundred megabytes of storage in this manner and still have something fairly portable.

Any thoughts? I'd really like to get this project off the ground, so to speak!

Re:Only 200GB?

[croddy]

http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htm

Re:Only 200GB?

[Rycross]

Sorry someone beat you to it.

Re:Only 200GB?

[SatanicPuppy]

Yer math is a bit off. 90/200 is right...for a 200 meg drive. But for a 200 gig drive, it's 90/200,000 (counting 1000 megs to the gig, which is wrong), which equals .00045 cents per meg, which means one meg in floppy cash is equal to 466 megs in harddrive cash.

So a 200 gig drive made of floppies would cost about $42,000 (1 meg = .21, .21 * 200,000)...A bit more than twice the price of a 200 gig hard drive.

Re:Only 200GB?

[DFarmerTX]

Thanks Google Calc:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%2490+%2F+200+GB+in +dollars+per+MB

-DF

Re:Only 200GB?

[general_re]

...a properly redundant RAID array of inexpensive disks...

You mean "a properly redundant redundant array of inexpensive disks array of inexpensive disks"? Judging by your post here, you're well on your way to insanely redundant levels of insane redundancy....

Re:Only 200GB?

[jacksonj04]

"Properly redundant RAID array" would be fine though, since RAID is the technology. It's like "ASP Page" actually turns into "Active Server Pages Page", but that's OK because RAID is only the technology.

Screw the Nano.

[mopslik]

I've always wanted an iPod Kilo.

Re:Screw the Nano.

[Infinityis]

Apple Headquarters Raided

Cupertino, CA (AP)

In response to recent news of the latest iPod developments, federal agents raided Apple Headquarters as part of an international drug bust. During the raid, 10,000 iPod Kilos were recovered. The contents of these white blocks have proven highly addictive, especially to teenagers and college students. What most students fail to realize is the dangers involved in being a regular 'user'.

"Many of these kids turn the volume way too lound and actually damage their ears" one federal agent said, on condition of anonymity. "It's horrifying what this company tries to push off as 'harmless fun'".

During the bust, executive ringleader Steve Jobs was arrested. It is believed that he abused his power in trying to control other markets.

An RIAA spokesperson was available for comment: "It's great that they caught this guy--he was trying to regulate prices on our goods. Not only was he selling highly addictive material, but he used his influence to try to brainwash his followers into believing that it's OK to pay only $0.99 per song. Now that he's gone, we can start charging fair market value for songs."

For concerned parents, please be aware of the following signs that your child may be using iPod Kilos:
--a thin white line going up to each ear
--difficulty hearing quiet noises
--an unsightly bulge in your child's pant pockets
--during normal conversation, your child prefixes normal words with the letter "i" as in "eating iDinner", "going on an iDate", and "driving an iCar"
--using jargon associated with iPod Kilos, such as podcasting, iTunes, or Apple

illegal warez?

[dmf415]

Note that the 200gb capacity enables you to store about 50 000 pieces of music. If this capacity is filled with illegal "warez" mp3s, you can be fined up to 75 000 000 USD. (204 800 megabytes, 4 megabytes per song, 10 songs per CD, average CD price 15 USD).

Who else besides the author has 75 million handy?

Re:illegal warez?

[gunpowda]

The whole point of excessive storage in a device is comfort. People like to have way more than they'll ever use just for the sake of it - Gmail is a particularly good example.

Don't forget that iPods don't just have to store music - I'm sure as capacities increase we'll move towards higher quality, even lossless music files as a standard.

Re:illegal warez?

[iphayd]

Would it be a bad time to mention that all recorded (and heard) audio is by definition lossy?

There are plenty of sounds that we do not record, because we are not supposed to be able to hear them. However, I know of people that say that recordings sound different because the high tones are missing completely. This is on analog recordings.

Re:illegal warez?

[Chris Pimlott]

Only if you're recording from an analog source. There's a good deal of music these days that is produced entirely from digital sources.

Re:illegal warez?

[RatBastard]

And what about using it as a USB drive? Or they want to use Apple Lossless format?

And why does everyone assume that if you have more than X gigabytes of music you must have stolen it all? I have 17GB in my iTunes library out of 21GB of potential (if I hadn't deleted the songs I didn't like) music. Where did this all come from? 95% from CDs I own that are sitting in my living room (minus the odd CD that only had one song I liked on it and sold to the used CD store). Of the rest most have come from either iTunes Music Store, EMusic.Com and a few from artists websites. How the hell could I have done this? Easy. I've been buying CDs since 1987.

I find the knee-jerk assumption that large storage automatically means theft offensive. Take your "you must be a thief to want this" attitude and ram it up your ass.

Re:illegal warez?

[Grotus]

He just jumped to the smallest length possible, the Planck length. You pretty much asked for that, since you mentioned quantum mechanics.

Sophia has inspired us all

[Ingolfke]

"There's nothing like adding an extra 196 gigs to my iPod Nano so I can listen to all my favorite British Invasion bands." -- Oscar Wilde.

It's good to see that more and more people are realizing that the Uncyclopedia is the true source for knowledge.

Re:Sophia has inspired us all

[Pulzar]

Most of Uncyclopedia's stuff is like 'The country of Nigeria is famous for its 70s glam rock music. It was recently visited by George Bush, the Queen of Sweden.

Oh, come on, look at the Nigeria article... It's nothing like what you describe. Here's a good quote from that page:

...Nigeria has an extensive technology sector. The biggest business sector in Nigeria is online financial re-allocation. Many wealthy countries such as Britain often have large sums of unclaimed money. Nigerians are typically employed to re-allocate millions of dollars to lucky Americans via email for a 100,000$ bank fee....

Like the Black Widow

[merkhet]

Much like the black widow, after the battery life of the Nano completely drains, the Maxtor Diamond will attempt to eat the iPod Nano for sustenance

/.ed: Oh My God, They Killed Uncyclopedia!

[ettlz]

You bastards!

Re:/.ed: Oh My God, They Killed Uncyclopedia!

[nazsco]

hehe, i'd mod you up, but since i have no mod points, i will earn some karma :)

coral cache:
http://uncyclopedia.org.nyud.net:8090/wiki/Ipod_Na no_200gb_Instructions

Macroscopic

[brokenarmsgordon]

An iPod Macro, just what I've also been holding out for!

welcome to last week

[illtron]

Apparently someone at Slashdot has invented time travel and failed to post about it. Or maybe they traveled into the future and posted about it then.

Coral cache

[bcat24]

Try this link.

see also...

[FuriousBalancing]

12 minute battery hack for iPod Nano!

Next hack for Nano

[Ingolfke]

Does anyone know of a hack to get thet battery life on the 200Gb Nano up from 6-minutes? I'm thinking maybe a car battery could be used for power. Any thoughts?

Raid

[zerobeat]

I think I'm going to wait for a Raid hack...

Still Waiting

[Seumas]

In all seriousness, size is the only reason I haven't bought an iPod. I bought one in 2003 and gave it away by the end of the year to a coworker. I don't want to just carry a few songs with me. I want to carry my entire collection. And not just MP3s and AACs, but OGGs, too. Theoretically, I would like to store and listen to all of my music on a single device. I don't want to store 100% of my collection on an external drive, plug it into my laptop, connect the ipod to my laptop and copy of 20% of my collection at any one time.

So as soon as these suckers hit around 300gbs, I'll be buying one.

Re:Still Waiting

[rock217]

Because its a good idea to store all of your (song) data in ONE PLACE, because it will NEVER FAIL.

More than I'll ever use?

[Demon-Xanth]

My gmail account has some 827MB worth of crap on it. I'm filling it at pretty close to the growing rate.

Remember that 1GB HD that you'd never fill up?
The 32MB of RAM that was workstation levels?
The fast 14.4k modem?

I think Uncyclopedia needs this upgrade

[saskboy]

It seems Uncyclopedia forgot to upgrade their server with a 200 Trilobyte WAN connection. You'd think they'd put their own good advice to use and avoid the Slashdot effect?

sure

[myukew]

Photoshopped from ArsTechnica. Remove if sued.

Coral cache

[rock217]

Coral Cache

Re:a little late?

[djward]

Oooh, a whole WEEK ago! You MUST be cool reading ALL these sites EVERY minute, just WAITING for that FRESH scrap of news!

There is an Outside. BELIEVE in the Outside.

Site already slowing down!

[nubbie]

Google cache!
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:i22oAfgJYvgJ:u ncyclopedia.org/wiki/Ipod_Nano_200gb_Instructions+ &hl=en&client=firefox-a

Portability?

[rock217]

Its a shame you lose some portability needing to power the drive and all, I would have liked to see a nice car battery attatched supplying the DC 12v.

site slashdotted

[Chubby_C]

can't read... don't own a nano anyway so it doesn't matter too much; just wanted to feed the curiousity. my biggest question is, and always has been: Can Slashdot be slashdotted?

Stupid me

[paladinwannabe2]

I thought this was a serious article for 5 whole seconds. I feel stupid now.

Other iPod Hacks

[wehe]

There are many other hacks for the Apple iPod family available already. From the first generation iPods as well as for the iPod Shuffle and iPod mini. You may also find links to hacks for accessories like cables and headphones and batteries.

120GB Archos

[meehawl]

The old Archos players are bulky, but they do go to 120GB when you drop in the latest Seagate 2.5" drives. Pretty sweet. It's nice being able to add $100GB to your DAP for only a hundred bucks or so.

It's just a pity that their expansion has to stop here because their disk controller is not LBA and only reads up to the ~127GB limit.

Uncyclopedia vs. Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the spring, I saw a "Coming Soon" announcement for Uncyclopedia which said It's like Wikipedia, only you can make shit up!

in 3 years..

[perler]

this is that kind of story you read in 3 years and thinks "wow, that was a joke at that time?!" - quite like an april fools joke in an (east-)german DIY mag in the early eighties about a "poket tv" complete with DIY blueprints and part list, haha ;) - at that time you just couldn't imagine happen something like this because "you will never get a tube so flat to get into your pocket!"

PAT

It's all fun and games until someone gets /.'ed

[AngryNick]

Ok, everyone stop clicking on the link for the next 2 minutes. I've got work to do and you guys are all hogging the server. I'll let you know when I'm done.

Feel free to visit this link while you wait for me (I'm a slow reader).

all recording is lossy

[gad_zuki!]

>Would this be a bad time to mention that all digital audio is by definition lossey?

Wait. What makes "digital" lossy but non-digital non-lossy?

Pick any analog method of recording and duplication. Its lossy. Now toss in playback equipment, speakers, ears, etc.

I don't see how your neo-luddite comment applies nor why it should be modded up.

Arguably, digital methods are non-lossy over time considering current analog recordings (tapes, LPs) over time simply disintegrate causing all sorts of loss, while digital data can be reproduced without loss over generations and onto different digital media thus avoiding the aging problem. Copy that Office 2000 CD all you like, after the 8th generation you arent suddenly going to lose spell checker. Same with digital audio. Now copy that audio tape 8 times and tell me its not lossy.

Re:all recording is lossy

[the_wesman]

forget playback, forget the imperfections in the equipment, just think of this in purely theoretical terms for a moment....

when you have a sine wave it is continuous and smooth - now picture a digital representation of that (for this example, we'll talk CD-quality - 16-bit, 44.1KHz) - in the digital representation, you don't have a smooth curve, you have a stair step (I'm not sure if you've taken calc, but think of all those 'area under the curve' problems) - the sine wave gets samples 44,100 times every second which causes the stair step, as the sampling rate increases, the stair steps get smaller and as the limit (of the sampling rate) approaches infinity, the steps get infinitely small, but there will always be a stair-step/jaggy effect - this is the nature of the beast....

in theory, you can get the stair-steps small enough that "no one" call tell the difference, but the poster is right on, digital is "lossy" in this respect as you can never fully 100% represent an analogue curve. the poster is not talking about long-time signal degredation, but rather the raw mathematical concepts involved in digital simulations of "real world" concepts....

Re:iPod Nano becomes iPod Gigo

[PatrickThomson]

You seem to have forgotten to read 1) the slashdot article text 2) everyone elses posts. This is a JOKE, as seen by the monty python foot.

how about a more useful hack?

[RelliK]

Here is what would be a lot more useful:

- buy a 20GB iPod
- buy a 80GB 1.8" HD
- upgrade the HD in the iPod

This would be awesome if you fill up the HD but don't want to shell out $$$ for a whole new unit. Is this possible? I'd love to buy a 20GB model knowing that if I ever run out of space I can upgrade the HD.

Shannon Sampling Theorem

[DrJimbo]

Your argument is compelling, intuitive and dead wrong.

The Shannon Sampling Theorem states:

When sampling a signal (e.g., converting from an analog signal to digital), the sampling frequency must be greater than twice the bandwidth of the input signal in order to be able to reconstruct the original perfectly from the sampled version.

To put it into term that you can understand, if your ear cannot detect frequencies higher than 22.05 kilohertz then a sampling rate of 44.1 samples per second can perfectly reproduce any sound you can hear.

Re:Shannon Sampling Theorem

[DrJimbo]

Your argument is based on jumping around between three different domains:

• Mathematics
• Physics
• Engineering

You raise the problem of quantization error without mentioning signal to noise ratio. In the real world the signal to noise ratio is never infinite in analog systems. If the quantization errors are random and are well below the noise level in the analog parts of a system then they can be treated as a small component of the analog noise and they don't significantly contribute to any imperfections in the signal.

You say "humans have limited response to frequencies over 20 [k]Hz". My own tests and tons of scientific studies have shown that humans have a limited response to signals over 15 kHz and no response to signals over 20 kHz.

You go on to say " [...] even with band limited signals". All signals in the physical universe are time limited and band limited. The real world signals dealt with in audio engineering are even more limited. The only realm where non-band-limited signals exist is in abstract mathematics such as the field of Measure Theory. I've studied Measure Theory and AFAIK, it has no practical application in the real world, either in physics or engineering.

Your point that all analog systems are eventually non-linear is a good one. Unfortunately that is one of the key arguments why digital computation and reproduction is superior to analog. Your point is also misleading because you do not include the fact that all analog systems also have a finite signal to noise ratio and deal with a limited dynamic range of signals.

Finally your point that it is often useful to use a sampling rate that is greater than 2x the maximum frequency in the signal is totally valid. This issue is discussed in the article I linked to in my original post. I'm not 100% certain, but I am pretty sure that this engineering limitation is one of the reasons a 44.1 kHz sampling rate was chosen for CDs even though to top range of human hearing was 20 kHz. That extra 10% was to allow for anti-alias filters with a gentle enough slope so that they did not significantly distort the signal in the time domain.

I agree with you that anti-alias filters (on both input and output) are an essential part of a well designed digital recording system.

My key point is that claims that physical real-world digital recording systems can't record abstract, mathematically perfect analog signals are misleading and perhaps meaningless.

Re:Shannon Sampling Theorem

[anethema]

Wrong. You can perfectly reconstruct a 22.05khz sine wave sampling at 44.1khz.

You can NOT accuratly reconstruct a 22.05khz square wave with a 44.1khz sampling clock. Look up nyquist's theorum.

Re:Shannon Sampling Theorem

[anethema]

Just to let the lazy ones know (since it shows this in the wikipedia link) this is nearly ALWAYS refered to as the nyquist theorum.

Dupe Bot

[Mulletproof]

Didn't you know that it's a script that accepts and rejects your stories based on keywords, the status of your slashdot subscription and a random accept/reject flag? Obviously you either forgot to subscribe, spam the proper keywords or just plain failed the randomly scripted check.

Only after all that does it go to a live reviewer to be duped ^_^

it's a JOKE...

[gotr00t]

The article is obviously satire about how some people simply don't understand the point of having an iPod. It's _NOT_ about the storage space, it's _NOT_ about the features. It's a convinent way to carry music around.

I see it as a slap in the face for those people who say things like "the iPod should have an CF expansion slot!" or "it should have video!!!111!one"(actually it does now), because that's not the selling point of the iPod.