iPod shuffle needs to be partitioned in advance to use as a flash drive?

[SnowTown]

I heard that you would have to partition the Shuffle into space for music and space set aside for flash drive in advance in iTunes. Any truth to that? If it's really true it really brings down the appeal of an already very few featured player.

[Icecool]

Well...

There has been a report on this board and the official Apple one that when the iPod shuffle was taken out of the box and plugged in for the first time, it wasnt recognised.

Now, I'm not sure, BUT, I would imagine that Apple would set the amount of space for music to the absolute maximum, since it is being marketed as an MP3 player.

Im not sure if they do it via partitions, but it certainly sounds viable. Actually this would be the most logical explanation I can think of for how they do it.

(Dont take my word for it, or the guy who posted the problems word for it, I'm just speculating).

[polycarbon]

http://www.apple.com/ca/ipodshuffle/

Go to the bottom of that page. There's a picture of a slider. You can set the amount of space that the shuffle will use for music and for data, and it can be reset to be the entire 512 meg/1 gig, or to be mostly for data.


Music and More

With up to 1GB of storage space(4), iPod shuffle happily accommodates files along with your music. Via iTunes, you tell iPod shuffle how much storage space to leave free for files and how much to Autofill with music. Then use iPod shuffle as a portable backup drive or to exchange files between multiple computers.

As for the "not recognized" problem, it's probably just an isolated instance. I don't believe Apple is know for botching releases, although some defects are to be expected. More probably, that person didn't update their iTunes to the newest version that works with the iPod shuffle.

[MartyMcPod]

I think it requires a partition. Many USB keys do this, for Private and Public sectors. One sector is password protected, and the other is visible to everyone.

[baggss]

polycarbon is correct, no partition is required. It is an option you can set in iTunes.

[SnowTown]

Wow that's crappy... 2 separat partitions for music and data. Either music or data and can't be mixed. A good quality that most USB drive have is to delete current files and put in it's place anything one desires. This completely kills any consideration I might have before about getting an iPod shuffle.

[jerrodh]

I don't think they're separate partitions AT ALL, guys... even in the iTunes slider. Chill. :D

The iTunes slider doesn't partition anything --- it just defines how much music the "Autofill" button will place on the iPod shuffle.

[canyonblue737]

polycarbon is only partly right. you MUST set aside an amount of memory in iTunes for the file portion of memory in order to use it as a USB key. out of the box it is set to have NONE of the memory used as file memory, so that is why it wasn't working out of the box. Yes it is too bad that memory needs to be set aside in advance rather than have a constantly shifting available amount based on empty memory not used for music at the moment, but it isn't a big deal.