I love my old school technology. While I love all the new developments in tech, I’m still one of these people who wont replace something which is perfectly good just to upgrade to the latest model. My 5th Generation iPod is no exception. I bought this iPod in 2006 from the Apple store in San Francisco. It was my first new Apple device & I opted for the special U2 edition, not because I particularly like U2, but because I loved the black with red click wheel.
This iPod has seen heavy usage since the day I bought it. It has traveled with me around the world, still in its original Belkin hard case & it has never EVER failed me.
I had to replace the battery a few years back as it was holding less & less charge, but apart from that it just keeps going. I think the Wolfson DAC in this generation iPod offers the greatest sound output from any of the Apple music players before or since. It knocks the socks off even my iPhone 6 and all of my previous iPhones.
From the iPhone 3G onward I’ve been tempted to switch my music to the iPhone only but I have various gripes with that. Firstly, it has limited storage space & is quite a clunky experience. I don’t like streaming as it relies on Connectivity, which eats battery, its useless for international travel and generally gives an interrupted user experience. Secondly, I find myself constantly interrupted by push notifications, calls, texts & distractions. Walking around a city in my own world listening to my extensive music library used to be my way of disconnecting and chilling out. Since using smart phones this is less & less viable.
So I’ve switched back to the iPod. My problem now is since using iTunes match, my entire library is now of a higher bitrate. My music is mostly now in 256kbps AAC. My MP3 collection used to be predominately 160kbps or 192kbps which was pretty normal in mid to late 2000’s. Couple that with my ever-growing library & I’ve found myself needing to be selective about the music I carry on the iPod. I hate that! If I think of a tune I would like to listen to on the go, I like to have it to hand. I therefore decided to upgrade the old iPod, not by replacing it, but by enhancing it.
I researched putting in an SSD and doing an iPod SSD upgrade, which seemed a good prospect, but not very flexible. I then looked at the possibility of using SD or Compact Flash cards to expand the memory & stumbled across the iFlash website & boards. iFlash make boards which allow you to swap out the internal ZIF hard drive on the iPod 5th Gen and replace it with a small PCB supporting SD cards. You have the option of a board supporting one card, a dual SD board or a quad board. To future proof I went for the quad board meaning I could expand it easily in the future.
The iFlash essentially replaces your hard drive with a board running SD cards which acts as a virtual HDD using JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) mode allowing you to mix and match SD cards to create one large volume. I ordered the iFlash Quad & two fresh Sandisk Ultra Micro SDXC Class 10 cards. Both cards are 64GB giving me a combined 128GB of flash storage in the old iPod. Compared to the standard 30GB this is a massive improvement, & I can add some more SD cards in the future if needs be.
I used the iFixit tear down guide to dismantle my iPod, bearing in mind that I’ve stripped it down in the past to replace the battery. Dismantling is fairly easy, I’d recommend an iPod opening soft tool to open the case. The back cover is metal but the front is plastic so you don’t want to damage the clips or the casing. Make sure to turn the iPod off and use the lock switch to lock the iPod before starting. I find it best to insert the removal tool in the case gap on each side and run it the full length a few times to pop the clips open. I don’t lever it at all, the simple back and forth sliding is normally enough. One is pops open, don’t just pull it apart as the battery ribbon cable needs to be removed. I use a small pair of tweezers to lift up the brown ribbon latch a few mm. Go really easy with this, it only needs to raise slightly to release the cable. Once the cable is removed you can open the case like a book, leaving the other ribbon untouched.
The next thing you need to do is flip the hard drive 180 degrees towards the bottom edge of the case to expose the ZIF cable & connector. You then need to lightly flip-up the black connector at the HDD end, it doesn’t lift up, it flips up through 90 degrees or so to release the cable.. Once that is lifted you can slowly ease the ribbon cable out.
Next you need to take your iFlash board & insert your SD cards. In my case I inserted both 64GB cards into slow 1 & 2. Make sure you have removed all of the grey HDD bumpers, I found an extra little bumper at the bottom edge which had to come out to seat the iFlash properly. Slip the HDD ribbon into the ZIF connector on the iFlash and close the lock bar. It works exactly the same as the one you just opened on your HDD. I used tweezers again to make sure the ribbon was fully seated int he connector, be careful not to kink the ribbon. Light pressure only. You can then seat the iFlash and stick one of the supplied sticky pads to the chipset to keep it snug when the case is closed.
Before clipping the case back together, reinsert the battery ribbon and click the lock shut. Place the top case onto the bottom case but don’t clip the case back together yet. First plug your iPod into your computer and check that you can restore it with iTunes and that it boots up & reports your new storage capacity both in iTunes and on the iPod in the settings menu. Once you are happy & have restored the iPod using iTunes, clip back together & enjoy.
So far I’m loving this mod. Battery life is much improved as the iFlash doesn’t have a platter to move like the old HDD. Also I found syncing to be much faster, song seeking much faster and the ability to sync my entire library in 256kbps AAC means vastly improved audio quality. Better clarity and less fuzz.
This mod should be do-able by most competent DIY-ers and hardware hackers. Just be careful when releasing cable release latches, the plastic is now 10 years old in mine & no doubt more brittle with age. Take your time with these parts, treat it as if it where precious. No force, just patience.
I now have a smart phone killer in the mobile music battle. I expect this iPod will keep travelling the world with me for many years. I’m also looking onto running an even higher capacity battery, but right now I can just run it off my Anker PowerCore 20100 power bank if required.
Below is a picture of my upgraded iPod & my original packaging. This is now 10 years old (was 10 in June this year) and I still treasure it like the day I bought it.
If you have carried out any hardware hacks on old iPod do let me know & as always if you need help, just ask me in the comments.
Hello John, I came across this post trying to research the maximum storage I can put on a 5G ipod. I am wondering how things worked out. How much of the available storage were you able to use? Is you ipod still going strong?
Hi Marc.
Yes still using my iPod daily. I’ve now got 4 64GB Sandisk Micro SD cards in there, and pretty much all of that is usable storage. Comes up as 256GB in iTunes.
Still going strong & still love it. I’ve even taken to encoding some of my FLAC files into Apple Lossless and putting those on the iPod. They sound wonderful.
Thanks for sharing this tutorial. I upgraded my iPod Video with the same iFlash Quad adapter a couple years ago and have been very pleased with it. Now I’m ready to add another 128GB microSD card. When you added your card was it as simple as opening up the iPod case, sliding in the extra card, and just closing the iPod up and turning it back on to see the storage increase? Or did you have to reformat or re-sync the iPod after adding the new card?
can you tell me if i need to format the micro SD cards? also…can i use SDHC and also SDXC…how can i format the cards on mac?
You should be able to mix the card, but the read/write rates would be reduced to that of the slowest card.
With regards formatting, you will need to restore the ipod in itunes, as the individual cards act as one large disk, so itunes will format for you when restoring the iPod. No need to format in advance.
You will need to restore with itunes for the ipod to work. As soon as you add another card, the ipod will fail to boot requiring an itunes restore.
Hello John, I recently purchased a refurbished Ipod Classic 5.5 and will be doing this upgrade in the near future. Do you know what the max GB iTunes can handle? I have seen some people say iTunes limited the 5th Generation to 128GB. Don’t want to go overboard and try to push past 128-256 if the program by itself won’t read it.
Hi John, is there a maximum capacity on the cards I can use? I would like to add the max since I’m using all apple lossless files. Thanks
Not sure of a maximum size? I’m using 4 x 128GB cards now without any issues. It will be trial & error situation I’m afraid.
If it’s a 5.5 I can confirm that it supports at least 256GB ( I have a mixture of 64GB and 128GB cards in at present & it reports the full 256GB in iTunes). So the 5.5 board definitely supports higher capacities.
I have heard the 30gb 5th gen iPods have a 32mb ram chip while the 60gb and 80gb have 64mb. Apparently if your iTunes dB file exceeds the ram you have (32gb = approx 17k songs) your music may not show up.
The problem I have with my iPod is that it is a bit of a Frankenstein. The original 5th gen logic board needs a reflow after one of the components desoldered with age. I’ve yet to do it, but I got a refurbed logic board from eBay. The refurbed board in there now is actually a 5.5 gen enhanced model (with search function & brightness controls), but I don’t know if it came from a 30GB model or a larger HD model, so I’m not sure how much ram it has for sure. I currently have almost 30k tracks on there without issue, so it could be that it has 64MB. The 5.5 gen seems to be the ultimate logic board as it has more features, is less prone to desoldering (i believe they changed the soldering process) & still features the Wolfson DAC.
John; I’m starting my first mod on my 5th gen, 30gb iPod. I have the parts ordered which includes a quad sd card holder. I want to use a 512 sd card micro, is this possible or will it be trial and error.
It will definitely be trial & error. I switched to two 64GB cards because I wanted a much more curated music collection for on the go. Definitely give it a go if you need so much space, if not, buy enough space for your needs.
High John I bought an iflash solo sd card board and a 256gb SD card but I keep getting the dead ipod logo and I have replaced the upgraded 3000 mah battery twice now is there something wrong with the hard drive cable I still have the original one installed what are your thoughts thanks?
iPod 5th gen can’t be used as a portable solution for your large movies library
I have 5.0 gen iPod, originally 30GB but iFlashed to 256gb with a single sd card. I only have around 8000 songs, including about 400 in lossless ALAC, and typically 30 or so podcasts on it. This leave around 200gb unused that I had planned to fill me my 250 ripped DVD movie files (converted to ~1GB “iPod or iPhone” format by iTunes). However, I found that transferring more than around 30 movies causes the iPod’s content to not show up – the iPod appears to be empty of all content even though iTunes says all the songs and movies are on it (and the iPod’s ‘About’ screen says most of the 256gb is used up). I replicated this issue every time I exceed 30 or so movies, on both MacOS Mojave and Catalina. I also get the issue if I turn on disk mode and use the iPod as a USB drive for the movies instead of syncing them via iTunes.
Thought I’d share just in case anyone else was thinking of using their old iPod od as a portable movie store.