iPod mini flash storage upgrade.

I decided to upgrade my iPod to flash storage due to filling up the 6GB capacity very quickly and needing more space.

I still like to use iPods for the better DAC as well as the fact having a separate device for music means that no calls or texts will mute my music.
I use a 30gb iPod video with a dock in my hifi, and have a 2nd generation iPod mini to take when I go out, but it is only 6GB, and could only hold around 600 songs at 320kbps. Not only this, but since it uses a 1" microdrive, battery life isn't as good as it could be, and skipping songs has a delay. All of these issues can be fixed by switching to flash storage.

The plastic end caps must be removed first by inserting a thin metal pry tool between the plastic and the aluminium case.
There are also two small philips head screws on either side which must be removed.

This metal clip needs to be removed from the bottom next. The arms can be pushed in with cir-clip pliers, or with a small screw driver. Take extreme care not to push any tool through to the ribbon cable as this allows the click wheel to communicate with the iPod.

The ribbon cable needs to be disconnected next. You must ensure that you are only prying on the black (or white as it is in some models) plastic and not the orange ribbon, because it's possible to peel the ribbon off of the back of the connector. If this happens you will need to replace the entire click wheel assembly.

The entire mainboard will now slide out by pushing from the bottom out of the of the extruded aluminium body.

This is the back view of the mainboard, at the top is the battery which can be unplugged and replaced if needed, at the bottom is the 1" microdrive, which is usually be a Hitachi brand one, but my model had a Seagate ST1.

As you can see, the microdrive uses the exact same connector as compact flash cards, this allows for a direct swap. High capacity CF cards can be expensive however, so I used an iFlash CF to SD adaptor along with a Kingston 64GB SD card. The connector is directional, and - in the case of the iFlash adaptor - must be installed with the shiny side towards the board.

I connected the iPod to iTunes before reassembling it in case I had missed anything or not inserted anything far enough.

You will see this message which looks bad but it's what you want to see! The SD card is blank and doesn't have the iPod's operating system on it, so iTunes cannot communicate with it, press OK and then restore iPod.

Success! iTunes will even give the iPod 64GB badge (or whatever size you upgraded it to) and it will all work as normal, it will even sync songs faster.

After formatting (and due to the way manufacturers calculate a gigabyte as 1000mb not 1024mb as it really is) I ended up with  58.1GB useable on my iPod mini, a huge upgrade over the 6GB I had!

Overall this project cost me £19, since I only needed the iFlash adaptor. I already had the iPod and the SD card but if I didn't, the SD would've been £10 and the iPod would have been £10-30 from eBay, CeX, Gumtree etc. You can use higher capacity cards, I've seen people use 256GB and even 512GB, but iTunes has a limit of 30,000 songs due to the ram of the iPod (which can't be upgraded as it is soldered to the board). Once you reach this limit, the iPod will crash when you try to shuffle songs. However, this limit doesn't apply if you use the custom firmware Rockbox, but I won't be covering this as it doesn't interest me, nor do I need it.

Battery life is now longer, I can skip through songs faster, and songs skip faster. Along with the fact that the storage is higher, obviously!

The project wasn't too hard, with the hardest part being removing the cir-clip as I didn't have the correct pliers. It was less involved than opening the 5th and 6th gen classics, but around the same difficulty. I prefer the mini due to it's monochrome screen which is far easier to see in sunlight, with the only downside (to me) being its inability to display album art.