News.blog: iPod surgery in a flash

Want an iPod nano, but you're stuck with a fourth-generation iPod? One DIYer has figured out a way to remove his iPod's hard drive and replace it with an adaptor that can accommodate plug-in flash memory cards.

Make Magazine spotted the most recent efforts of Mark Hoekstra, who posted his tips on geektechnique.org. He took two iPods, a 40GB photo model and a 20GB regular model, and replaced the hard drives with a homemade adaptor. After getting well-acquainted with his soldering iron, he produced a working iPod capable of storing songs on flash memory.

Flash memory is more expensive than a hard drive of equal storage capacity, but it has no moving parts, which makes it more reliable. Apple is expected to eventually shift the entire iPod line-up over to flash as costs come down, but if you can't wait, check out the tips. You probably don't want to make this your first modding project -- Hoekstra has already published a how-to on turning an iPod Mini into a flash-based iPod.