Hi all,

I am slowly preparing for a seven month backpacking trip around Europe and would like some help about using my iPod Photo while abroad.

I've just bought an iPod camera connector so that I can transfer my photos to my iPod while away. The problem with this solution is that I will then not be able to access my photo files until I am at a Mac as my iPod is formatted for Mac; they will be "trapped" in my iPod possibly until I get back to Australia. This is a pity as I would like to email certain shots and perhaps even post some to my travel blog from internet cafés.

The solution would seem to involve reformatting my iPod so that it is recognised by PCs. I would then need to transfer my iTunes library back on to the device.

Would anybody be kind enough to step me through this process from formatting the iPod so that it can be read by a PC to transferring my music back on to my PC-formatted iPod? I can't seem to find clear instructions anywhere. If you could point me to a post on MacTalk or a web page with relevant info, I'd be really grateful .

- Henry

Connect your iPod to a PC with iTunes installed and restore the iPod. You can't format for Windows on a Mac.

Needs to be formatted for FAT (so it will work under OS X and WIndows) - please note you will have a 4GB file size limit. which shouldn't be an issue to you!

Wow! That was quick. I've had exactly the same post up on the Apple discussions iPod forum for the past 4 days and no one has replied. Conclusion: this community rocks!

I thought I'd need to format it on a PC. Damn! What do I then do to restore my music onto the iPod? Is it simply a matter of plugging my iPod back into my Mac and synchronising the music again? That would be typical Apple simplicity. Or would strange things happen with the DRM encoding? Would the fact that I formatted it using another version of iTunes kill my DRM encoded music?

Sorry about all the questions but you guys seem to know what you're talking about.

- Henry

Couldn't you just format the disc to FAT with Disk Utility? Or would that just make iTunes grumpy and make it re-reformat it to HFS+ again?

If so, finding a PC and formatting it with that may be your only hope...

Nah, your Mac will be fine with it - I've had plenty of people hook up thjeir FAT formatted iPods to my Macs. Just make sure you're signed in in your iTunes account (mine signed me out once, and after leaving my iPod on to charge it 'updated' itself, and all my DRM protected music from iTMS became unplayable...and I had a 10 hour day standing and shooting cricket on a platform...I wasn't a happy camper that day)

Yeah, it was exactly that question which led me to post in the first place. I don't see any technical reason why I couldn't format it using Disk Utility but perhaps iTunes needs to create certain invisible folder structures etc on newly-formatted iPods. I don't really know.

I can use my partner's PC to format the iPod but my question remains about DRM-protected music - will there be issues? Hopefully one of the gurus here will know.

- Henry

Ahh OK - makes sense. Good ol' Apple.

Can anybody shed any light on whether I can use Disk Utility to change my iPod to FAT format?

- Henry

Will not work.

You can FAT format the iPod using Disk Utility but when you restore the iPod using iTunes on the Mac it will re-format it as HFS+.

OK. Thanks MightyAtom. I thought that might be the case. My partner doesn't have iTunes installed so I guess I'll have to get the PC version and get it on her computer.

Oh, and MightyAtom: congratulations in advance on your 300th post (not that anyone's counting). Thanks for your help - I really do appreciate it.

- Henry