I currently use my iPod on Windows and was wondering if I stuck a load of stuff on there to transfer over to a Mac if OS X would pick it up as a removable 40GB FAT32 drive first, or simply go ahead and try to wipe it.

I read it wouldn't even read it on iPod Lounge, and needed to be reformatted to Mac standards before being used. But, that was for iTunes/song compability, I don't know about as a mass storage device.

Yeah, I read that as well. My hope was that it'd appear as a removable drive first, I could grab everything I needed off of it then use the iPod Software Update to format it to a Mac iPod.

it doesnt just work by itself?

it does work... i have my 4g ipod formatted fat32 and it works both in iTunes and finder as a removable disk

will OSX even read the drive if its formatted to FAT32?

thats what was just said

Cool, thanks

Yeah Mac OS X will read FAT32 formatted drives and can write data to it.

It won't work in itunes on osx if it's been restored on a pc, unless you restore it back first or use a third party app.
itunes will say this ipod is unreadable and tell you to launch updater.

apple was all about the system exclusivity with the ipod, a typical user can't use it on more than one computer at a time without erasing everything first, and you have to format it to go from one OS to another.

make sure you don't have iTunes in OSX set to auto start when and iPod is connected because then it will format the iPod.

it will ask you if you want to first...but if you do just hit enter without readint the message it'll start formatting...it doesn't do anything so drastic without user permission

let us know of your sucess or lack thereof

There was an update to iTunes a while back that let the OS X version use Fat32 based iPods, so it will work for a drive and aac player.

I use my iPod to transfer stuff to/from work all the time. Going from Windows XP to OS X (Panther) and back causes no problems. It shows as a hard drive on both. Or, if the battery's low, just plug it in and play the music on the iPod through iTunes on my work computer.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61675

"...Using an iPod formatted for Macintosh on a Windows computer is not supported. Using an iPod formatted for Windows on a Macintosh computer is not supported."

If my Windows PC's main hard drive is formatted to NTFS

and I want to access it via the network, or at least use a shared printer, through an iBook...

could I do that?

My iPod is FAT32 and is recognized and can be synced with both XP and OS X itunes. Apple for some reason still says it won't work but it does. To darktemplar, yes, so long as the folders/files are shared in Windows, OS X will use the SMB file sharing protocol to access them.

Yes, but search next time, this has been asked a lot.

Just whatever you do, don't open iTunes. I did this when I first got my iMac and slowly my songs started getting the little "not found" symbol in iTunes without even doing anything (yes, i even had iTunes set to manually manage the iPod). My advice would be to open the terminal, navigate to the /volumes/ipod/ipod_control folder and use a sudo cp command to copy all your music to the hard disk, then restore it w/ the mac iPod software and re-add all the music through iTunes. Good luck.

One thing I've gotta ask as well. In Windows I use a little utility called Sharepod which sits on the iPod and extracts the music onto the hard drive in the "Artist\Album\01 Song name.mp3" format. Is there a similar utility for OS X or should I delete the current music structure temporarily and dump all my music folders on the iPod (essentially using it purely as a removable drive)?

yep... there is, but its shareware tho

Ipod Music Liberator
(dont worry about the windows screenshot they give)

Isn't there an iTunes mod that just lets you drag files off an iPod into your library?

There used to be, it was called xTunes. It worked great, too great, Apple blocked it from working in the .7 update to iTunes 4.

Dazzla, there are tons of apps out there that do what you are looking for. Do a search on http://www.macupdate.com/ for iTunes iPod and you will see many of them. They all basically work the same way. The ones that tout iTunes integration simply import the music into iTunes though, they do not actually run in the iTunes interface like xTunes did.