It’s a bit expensive at $40, but the new PodLock software from Micromat looks like it could be really handy for people that like to use their iPod as more than just a dumb music storage device (there is a hard drive in there, remember?) It’s namesake feature is the ability to create a hidden partition on your iPod for store personal data—not that useful by itself, but pretty handy when you add OSX’s FileVault encryption on top of it. It will also allow you to backup and restore the iPod volume to another drive—don’t know if that’s a disc image or the files themselves, but either way it could be handy. And probably most interesting to me, it also offers a way to defrag your iPod’s hard drive for increased performance and battery life. As far as I know, the only way to do this before was to reformat and reload.
Now get a Windows version out (or at least let it mount and tweak Windows-formated FAT iPods) and I might buy it.
Product Page [Micromat via MacMerc]
Reader Bob Croslin writes: “Norton Utilities will let you defrag an Ipod. I had no clue but decided to try it after reading your entry on Podlock. Very cool.”
