Upgrading an iPod Hard Drive: Possible?

[doom1701]

My wife has filled her 15G 3rd gen iPod. She wants to replace it, but the fundage just isn't there. I got to thinking, I could be a hero if I could pick up a large drive and swap it out for her. But then I got to thinking that it's an Apple device, and it's not going to be as hackable as my Archos Jukebox was when I upgraded that to 80GB.

A little googling seems to point to upgrades being possible--with drives from other iPods. Of course, that means getting ahold of another iPod, which takes me back to square 1. This is really only beneficial to anybody if I can go to Newegg or some other vendor and spend $100 on a nice, big drive that has never had the expensive "Apple" nametag stuck on it.

[Man In Black]

It's apparently quite possible.

http://www.notpopular.com/blog/comments.php?blogID=63

This is just the first place I found when I googled for "ipod hard drives" I'm sure theres others.

[Gai-jin]

I'd look at ebay for an ipod with a cracked screen or bad logic board.

[JoeyJoJo]

30GB 5G iPods are $179 refurbed on the Apple Store. Slide down 2/3 of the way on the store main page and click on the "sale" tag. Refurbs come with a full 1 year warranty so they're a great deal.

[JYoung]

Very possible.
http://www.ipodmods.com/shop/3g-ipod-hard-drives.html

But I don't think that it's particularly cost effective.
Unless you buy it on Fleecebay.
Still, get the part number from ipodmods.com and hit Google.
You might get lucky.

[doom1701]

Originally Posted by JoeyJoJo

30GB 5G iPods are $179 refurbed on the Apple Store. Slide down 2/3 of the way on the store main page and click on the "sale" tag. Refurbs come with a full 1 year warranty so they're a great deal.

That we did not know. She really has no preference on generation; the 4G 40GB for $129 is very, very tempting--and much more cost effective than even getting a replacement hard drive.

[Wilhite]

The inventory on the sale side of the Apple site changes pretty frequently. I looked on Friday afternoon and the 40GB unit wasn't there. So, if you see something that you like, you might decide to jump on it pretty quickly or be patient enough to check and wait for it to come back again.

I'm tempted by that one too, but I think that I'm going to wait a little longer and see what happens next week. My hope is that the current units will be reduced in price or replaced by something better and I can get a current unit cheaper than today's price.

[Otto]

Replacing a hard drive in an iPod is a matter of:
- Acquiring the drive
- Opening the iPod
- Plugging in the drive
- Closing the iPod
- Forcing Disk Mode
- Running iPod updater to write the drive image

That's about it, really. But the drive will probably cost more than its worth.