In case of emergency: Creating the bootable iPod classic
In a recent Macworld Podcast, I mentioned that it was possible to use an old iPod classic as a bootable drive for emergency troubleshooting use. Reader Kirk Aplin followed up for details. He writes:
I was intrigued by your tip for using old iPods in this week’s Macworld podcast. Have you written exactly how to do that somewhere?
Not in many years. It’s a technique I routinely showed off in the pre-iOS days when giving one of my “iPod Tips and Tricks” sessions. The gist is that a bootable iPod can be a very helpful tool when your Mac is refusing to start up or is generally misbehaving, and you’d like to boot it from another drive and use troubleshooting tools on the iPod to diagnose (and, you hope, repair) your Mac.
Sure, there’s a catch
The warnings of old are just as valid today. First of all, the iPod classic is not vented, so if you run the thing as a startup drive, it will heat up, which over time may shorten the drive’s life. For the kind of use I’m talking about here—running the iPod long enough to boot the Mac and run some tools—you should be fine. Just don’t run it as your regular startup drive.
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