No Hard Drive For You!

[Jason Dunn]

That's what you see when you connect your Zune to a PC that isn't already running the Zune software. It's the same for the Zune 30, Zune 80, and Zune 4/8: it will not function, or be seen, as a mass storage device. It's possible that the old hard drive hack will still work, but who wants to have to registry edit a PC before they can connect their Zune? I think it's ridiculous that the Zune team didn't add this feature to the Zune this time around - it's clearly a much-desired user feature, at least for a certain segment of Zune owners, and if Microsoft wants to steal away the iPod user base, they need to get the basic features right. Come on Zune team, I know you can do this: give us mass-storage connecting Zunes!

[Jason Dunn]

That's what you see when you connect your Zune to a PC that isn't already running the Zune software. It's the same for the Zune 30, Zune 80, and Zune 4/8: it will not function, or be seen, as a mass storage device. It's possible that the old hard drive hack will still work, but who wants to have to registry edit a PC before they can connect their Zune? I think it's ridiculous that the Zune team didn't add this feature to the Zune this time around - it's clearly a much-desired user feature, at least for a certain segment of Zune owners, and if Microsoft wants to steal away the iPod user base, they need to get the basic features right. Come on Zune team, I know you can do this: give us mass-storage connecting Zunes!

[Christopher Coulter]

Didn't really forsee they'd open it up per easy drag and drop, but up to the hack community to actually make Microsoft devices functional again. Sigh. But the brewing scrambled library issue, is hitting wide, and making even loyal die-hards upset. Geee, darned easy, with my Archos 604, drag and drop, all metadata kept fully intact too, nothing screwed up, plus video codec support heaven.

So a killer UI, slick interface, and a great device, totally pumped, but with all the typical Microsoft gotcha's that leave you screaming -- the no .H264 or MP4 for 30s, sigh, letdown de jour. But at least no 'wipe your music' guest sync'ing torture, how so "nice" of them.

Love/Hate as always...

[USArcher]

I found your graphic very effective and hopefully Microsoft gets the point. As far as Mass Storage Device capability goes, I just want to specify a portion of available Zune storage for that purpose.

I'm sure the vast amount of work required to entirely rewrite the Zune software prevented them from including everything they wanted. But hopefully by losing its WMP ties it will allow them to release updates more frequently. I'm still waiting for some commitment from Microsoft they are going to release Spring & Fall updates for Zune going forward. It just seems logical they would do that and reassure the user base that Zune has turned the corner.

[Damion Chaplin]

Originally Posted by USArcher

I'm sure the vast amount of work required to entirely rewrite the Zune software prevented them from including everything they wanted.

If all it takes is a registry hack to get it to appear as a mass storage device, how much re-writing of the Zune software would they have to do?

Hey Microsoft: Read My Words: I will never ever again buy a media player that does not include mass storage drag-and-drop support out of the box. Get it? Never Again.