I wanted more capacity, and I'm so good at dropping things that a hdd player would be a waste of time, so I took a gamble on a Super Talent 64Gb 533x from ewiz.com, Link
$174.99 + 8.55.
I decided that if the ipod couldn't handle it, I would at least have more storage. I placed my order 1/21 (Thursday afternoon), and it arrived Monday 1/25. Unfortunately, I broke the click wheel cable and had to get an ebay replacement. First I had to wait for that to arrive, then I was too busy to deal with the ipod last weekend. Finally, after getting it back together, I fire up itunes, restore, and..... SUCCESS. The full 64Gb is recognized, and syncs properly. (Wipes nervous sweat from brow)
The only issue has been transfering songs with my netbook: Dell mini 9 - Ubuntu 9.1 - Rhythmbox. Syncing a few songs was OK, but when I selected over 5000 songs to move at once, it started out fine, but after a while the transfer slowed to a crawl. It was down to about 30 seconds for one song when I gave up and disconnected the USB drive with the source files, and ejected the ipod normally. Fortunately all the songs were written to the ipod without corrupting it, and after a reset and rebooting the computer, I tried it again and the write speed is back to normal, but I've only moved a few songs at a time for testing.
When syncing from itunes on my main laptop, there was never any slowdown, but I never selected that many songs at once. I'm not sure what caused the slowdown, and I'm definitely not going to try re-creating the problem.
I now have 1264 artists, 1820 albums, 10044 songs on the mini with 1.4Gb free space. There is no signs of instability, and menu navigation is snappy. When ejecting it from itunes the "Do not disconnect" is displayed for about 30 seconds after clicking on eject. I never paid much attention before, but I think that is longer than with 32Gb card.
Some info on card speeds: The 533x (80Mb/s) advertised by Super Talent is when the card is used in a UDMA mode 5 card reader over firewire 800 or PCMCIA. I verified the capacity with h2testw.exe - 64,030,244,352 bytes - and it reported a sustained write of 16.7Mb/s, Which is the max of a PIO mode 4 or DMA mode 2 controller. Kingston 133x (20Mb/s) only got 10.8 Mb/s with h2testw.exe in the same reader. It looks like the Super Talent can reach the limit of the ipod disk controller, but not the Kingston. Computer is win XP, itunes 9.0.3, ipod connected via USB.
64Gb memory, a Nuforce uDAC (I got lucky & ordered during the 30 seconds Amazon had them in stock) and even with buying a clickwheel cable, the total was less than an ipod touch.
PS: I am ripping my cd collection to flac, with high bitrate AAC for portable. 128 kbps mp3s are being cleaned out as I buy CDs of my favorites, deleting the rest.
$174.99 + 8.55.
I decided that if the ipod couldn't handle it, I would at least have more storage. I placed my order 1/21 (Thursday afternoon), and it arrived Monday 1/25. Unfortunately, I broke the click wheel cable and had to get an ebay replacement. First I had to wait for that to arrive, then I was too busy to deal with the ipod last weekend. Finally, after getting it back together, I fire up itunes, restore, and..... SUCCESS. The full 64Gb is recognized, and syncs properly. (Wipes nervous sweat from brow)
The only issue has been transfering songs with my netbook: Dell mini 9 - Ubuntu 9.1 - Rhythmbox. Syncing a few songs was OK, but when I selected over 5000 songs to move at once, it started out fine, but after a while the transfer slowed to a crawl. It was down to about 30 seconds for one song when I gave up and disconnected the USB drive with the source files, and ejected the ipod normally. Fortunately all the songs were written to the ipod without corrupting it, and after a reset and rebooting the computer, I tried it again and the write speed is back to normal, but I've only moved a few songs at a time for testing.
When syncing from itunes on my main laptop, there was never any slowdown, but I never selected that many songs at once. I'm not sure what caused the slowdown, and I'm definitely not going to try re-creating the problem.
I now have 1264 artists, 1820 albums, 10044 songs on the mini with 1.4Gb free space. There is no signs of instability, and menu navigation is snappy. When ejecting it from itunes the "Do not disconnect" is displayed for about 30 seconds after clicking on eject. I never paid much attention before, but I think that is longer than with 32Gb card.
Some info on card speeds: The 533x (80Mb/s) advertised by Super Talent is when the card is used in a UDMA mode 5 card reader over firewire 800 or PCMCIA. I verified the capacity with h2testw.exe - 64,030,244,352 bytes - and it reported a sustained write of 16.7Mb/s, Which is the max of a PIO mode 4 or DMA mode 2 controller. Kingston 133x (20Mb/s) only got 10.8 Mb/s with h2testw.exe in the same reader. It looks like the Super Talent can reach the limit of the ipod disk controller, but not the Kingston. Computer is win XP, itunes 9.0.3, ipod connected via USB.
64Gb memory, a Nuforce uDAC (I got lucky & ordered during the 30 seconds Amazon had them in stock) and even with buying a clickwheel cable, the total was less than an ipod touch.
PS: I am ripping my cd collection to flac, with high bitrate AAC for portable. 128 kbps mp3s are being cleaned out as I buy CDs of my favorites, deleting the rest.
