My PC won't read my iPod... help!

[DoctorIt]

I know someone out in dgrin land will give me an answer for this. Today for the first time, I wanted to use my iPod as an external hard drive. I have a DVD burner on my lab PC, so I wanted to make a hard backup of some photos. Turned off all the auto update stuff in iTunes and copied on a whole bunch of image files onto the iPod. Plugged it in to the PC and it threw a fit and said "blah blah blah Bill Gates is a freak blah blah malfunctioned blah blah for more help, ah nevermind, you're screwed". No big deal, but it won't read the iPod at all.

I went searching a bit and found out that (makes sense) my iPod is formated as a Mac, and therefore the PC can't read it. I found XPlay (http://www.mediafour.com/), but at $30 it seems like more than I need. Anyone know of anything simpler, maybe freeware that will just let me use the iPod to transfer files from Mac to PC?

Thanks!

[JohnR]

Some might have a demo available. Just a quick check on http://www.macupdate.com found these.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10734 ($12.99 but might have a demo)

A lot has to do with MP3's, so not sure if they will work for files:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15987

[patch29]

This (http://www.dataviz.com/products/macopener/mo_ephpod.html?redirect=mo_ephpod_info) should work, but it is not free or cheaper than what you found, but it would be a solution. You can download a 14 day demo and try that. I just found it by searching, I have not used it.