Okay I am trying to judge the market for this and anyone may comment esp. if you have first hand tech knowledge on the topic.
I am think of developing a kit that will let you use 2.5 inch drive in a 4th or 5th gen Ipod.
This kit would include a new rear plate made of 1/16th polycarbonate to accommodate the slightly larger drive and a short 44 pin female to female cable to allow the 2.5 inch drive to be used there may also be a 44 pin female to sata adapter in the future. the reason for this cheaper more reliable storage for Ipods. anyway the new dimensions would be
4.1" x .80" x 2.75" only just slightly thicker and wider than before. Oh btw polycarbonate can be painted very easily thus further increasing customization options, any way thoughts comments.

Battery capacity? Everything else is doable but that thing is gonna turn into a brick just to give it enough juice to run for at least 8 hours between charges.

thx for the comment I will see what I can do about replacing 630mAh capacity battery with possibly a 2200mAh it is available in the same size as the 630mAh orig. or an even higher capacity battery hopefully that will run it for a long enough time I will just need to exp but with the bat upgrade would you be possibly be interested in purchasing the kit I won't hold you to ans it is just the whole point of this post is to gauge interest once again thx every one for comments and thoughts. btw the size chart above is abs. maximum.

Honestly if my iPod HD ever went and this kit was reasonably priced(<50 w/o HD obviously for user selection) then yes, I would totally consider it. Not only would I be able to use my iPod as an MP3 player but also as portable storage without worrying about the dang things HD exploding.

I'm curious to know how you're going to make the back plate. The only way that makes sense to me would be injection molding, but that's hella expensive.

i think its gonna be hard to develop a kit for both the 5th and 4th gen seing as the new 5th gen uses a new connector
http://www.tarkan.info/20070804/tutorials/...pact-flash-mod/
shows how someone made an adapter for a cf card, i wonder if it would be possible to make an adapter that would simulate two cf cards as one disc and add a much larger batter too it?
ipod 4th gen should be somewhat simple

i would be highly interested in a project like this,

while I'm not going to discourage any tinkering like this... there is one major flaw in the plan.


for starters "ipod" hard drives are about 4 times more expensive if you go to apple. if you go to toshiba (aka the source) they're not very expensive. it really negates the need to go to a kit like this.


you also loose out on all the cases that were built around original specs by apple, changes in weight and even more important temperature. also a 2.5" drive has a significantly higher voltage draw than a 1.8".



i don't know if you've ever seen a 1.8" next to a 2.5" drive... it's a rather large difference. a 2.5" drive is actually larger than a 30gb video ipod all by itself. I'll post some pics tonight... kinda funny having all of this crap on my desk at the same time.

Well part of it more than size was to get a 200gig Ipod but now that I know the voltages are different it makes the project totally infeasible thx for the info Red. Sorry to pull everyone away from other threads due to voltage over site on my part. btw the Red the pics would be much appricated. Also if you have a good connection on the Toshiba or Hitachi 1.8 inch drive I would really appreciate it he cheapest new 40gig I could find was around $120 US shipped, and I could no longer find them on newegg or zipzoomfly.
Also before I search for ever to find the max hdd storage for a 4th gen Ipod non-color,; do you happen to know it.
Thx for all the help
spectra.

I have no idea whatsoever, but would the software of an ipod recognize all 200gigs?

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/05/22/1-8...0_gb/page2.html

that compares cf 1.8 2.5 and 3.5 discs
kinda amazing to think that cf cards are now being made 10x as large as a expensive hdd 10 years ago for half the cost

10 years? Probably more like 4 years.

it's 5v / 1.0a on the 2.5" drive and 3.3v / 500ma on the 1.8" drive


I'm not sure about 200gb. however it DOES work with 120gb.

2.5 or 1.8 on the 120 gig. and btw good places to get 1.8" drive considering I don't really feel like volt modding an Ipod with with a step up dc to dc circuit do able but not worth it

I got mine direct from toshiba. and it's a 1.8"




now here's an idea you might consider... since size won't be as big of a deal. a car stereo made from an ipod. if I could get a decent car stereo to work with the ipod software / interface... I'd be very very happy.