iPod Storage

[monkeyinaspasm]

I just bought an ipod classic 160gb, and i used itunes to put all my music photos and movies onto my ipod, but i want to delete some files off my computer that i have on my ipod, but if i do wont it delete them off my ipod next time i sync it?

please help - im runnin out of hd space!

thnx in advance!

[Sparkee]

I would encourage you to add another hard drive to your computer and/or an external USB drive to keep a copy of your content. Both are pretty cheap these days. The iPod is not a good place to store your only copy of anything. Unless you checked the option to include full resolution photos you will only have low resolution versions on the iPod. I'm not sure with the classics, but the touch doesn't give that option any more.

With that said, you can set the iPod to manually manage music and videos. You will need to drag and drop all new content to the iPod, ratings and playcounts do not transfer back to iTunes.

Another option with auto sync left on is to leave the entries in iTunes but delete the files from your hard drive through Windows Explorer. Exclamation marks will show up beside the tracks in iTunes but they will still stay on the iPod. This helps maintain the ratings and playcounts which doesn't break some of the features with smart playlists.

[dimmer]

As Sparkee says don't rely on the iPod as your only source for files. One day it WILL need restoring (a fact of life with iPods), and you will lose all your files. Archive files onto DVD or something before you delete them, but even better buy an external hard disk. I have two of these, backing each other up.

If you choose the manual management option also you must leave it set on that forever - the first auto sync will lose all content not entered into iTunes. In some ways the second option of deleting the files, but not the iTunes entries is the better of the two.