Can I use my Apple iPod as a portable disk drive?

Turns out that this is not only doable, it's surprisingly easy!

Here are the steps needed to turn your Apple iPod from just a mild-mannered music player into a powerful and quite portable hard disk (and yes, even the lowly shuffle can do this trick).

The first thing you need to do is change the iPod’s settings in the iTunes application. In iTunes, chose Edit --> Preferences. Select the iPod tab to display your iPod options. It'll look like this:

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Select the "Enable disk use" option, as highlighted above, then click on "OK" to save your changes. Now quit iTunes and unplug your iPod.

Plug it in again, and voila! You'll have a new hard disk on your computer:

Click to see a full-size image

That should get you going! Note that the options for the Mac are quite surprisingly similar.