Upgrading Harddrive On 1St Gen 5Gb Ipod Ipod 1St Generation

Chosen Solution

Can anyone tell what is the Largest Capacity hard drive that can be fitted to a 1st Gen 5gb iPod?

You’ll need to use a single platter drive (despite the size :) ) which are denoted by Toshiba by the GAL or MAL suffix. I just dropped a 20GB drive (either MK2004GAL or MK2006GAL) in mine and it works like a charm. To my knowledge the largest drive easily available (ie eBay) is the 40GB MK4007GAL. You can also get a 30GB one - MK3006GAL. Well worth it - the first gen is my favorite, although closely followed by the third gen (the original iPod touch!), and it’s great to be able to continue to use it with a reasonable hard drive size.

The Toshiba MK2004GAL (20GB) is the largest hard drive that works with 1st gen iPods. However, not all of them work with the 1st gen iPod. If you want one that’ll work for sure, you have to get it from a 3rd gen 20GB iPod. I haven’t heard of any such compatibility issues with other models, like the MK1504GAL or MK1003GAL.

It appears the 4th generation hard drives aren’t compatible with the 1 and 2 gens. The 3rd gens drives are compatible and the largest is 20GB.