iPod, the mobile HD?

[hidden_sniper]

Hi! I bought an iPod about 2 months ago and I love it. I’ve been hesitant up until now to turn on the hard drive usage option for fear that I might randomly unplug it and mess everything up. I recently decided to give this option a go and I found that having 18 gigs in my pocket was a really neat feature. Now to the important part, I play a lot of games. I’m a huge fan of high end games like Doom 3, UT2k4, Half-Life 2, etc. All of these take huge hard drive space which I really have to devote to my graphic design class. I was wondering if anyone has tried installing and playing a game from their iPod and what their experiences were. I know that USB 2.0 isn’t as fast as a regular hard drive (SATA?) connection but is it fast enough?

[zip22]

that would put a ton of stress on your ipod hard drive, and i would imagine it would be hard to work the installation. in fact, im not sure it could be done. i also think the performance would surely take a hit

[tom10167]

Hard drives are less than fifty cents a gig. You can even get a Seagate for $120 right now. If you're worried about hard drive space I know 40 gigs(at best) from a slow Ipod just won't cut it. Go ahead and do yourself a favor and get a big 300GB drive and forget about space for a year or so.

[troutbumoh]

I would recommend against it. A typical internal IDE HD transfers data at 133MBps (MegaBytes per second) which equals 1064 Mbps (MegaBits per second). A SATA IDE drive is 150 MBps which is 1200 Mbps. Your ipod if it is Firewire (ieee1394) only transfers data at approximately 400 Mbps (Megabits per second). USB 2.0 takes this up to roughly 800 Mbps. I agree that it would be problematic from an installation standpoint but the performance issue would definately be the limiting factor.

[tom10167]

A typical IDE HD transfers somewhere around 50. SATA does no better.

[dark_15]

USB 2.0 has a max transfer of 480 Mbps. However, the performance is a lot poorer compared to a regular hard drive. Just buy a nice PATA/SATA drive and forget about it.

[hidden_sniper]

Well I come from just finishing installing Diablo 2 and testing it. (I was installing when I first posted). The game seems to run just as fast as with my internal HD but the load times are slightly longer. To answer some other peoples’ advice: I don’t think anyone makes a mobile 300 gig hard drive that can fit into my pocket :). My main computer right now is a laptop (with a small but fast 40 gig) and a lot of room is taken up by 300 dpi (around 3000x3000 on average) photoshop files. Seeing as my iPod cost me $300 for 20 gigs and my Cruzer mini usb stick cost me $35 for 256 mb, the iPod looked like a really neat alternative. Sadly this isn’t going to work out so I have to ask another question: is there a small (perhaps PDA size or a little larger) mobile hard drive that works well with games?

p.s. thank you guys for your help so far!

[dark_15]

The only thing I could think of is a laptop hard drive in an enclosure...

Enclosure Ideas (http://www.newegg.com/app/searchProductResult.asp?Submit=Go&Range=1&InnerCata=92&DEPA=0&bop=and&description=enclosure&srchInDesc=2%2E5&Order=price)
Laptop Hard Drives (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=list&catalog=380&DEPA=0)

Firewire is faster than USB 2.0, but not available in every computer.

Hope that helps! :)


EDIT: Realized I forgot to say:
:welcome: to the forums!!!!

[hidden_sniper]

Thanks a bunch, I'm thinking of making my own now.