Microsoft Zune as a hard drive…sort of…

by | Nov 25, 2006 | Blog, Computer Tips, Microsoft Windows

zuneI figured someone would get this working soon enough. While browsing news over at Google news I thought I’d see what popped up if I searched for Zune. About the second link down was “Use the Microsoft Zune as a hard drive” I gasped a bit (because this is one of the main issues I have with the Zune) and clicked the link. This took me to PVRWire to a post that had only been up for 4 hours. From that post there was a link to a site called Phaleux with the directions. I will repost the instructions here in case the previous site goes missing. But be sure to visit his site. I’ve tried the hack but so far it does not let me get anything off, nor put anything onto the drive. My computer has acted a bit funny a couple of times while browsing the Zune as well. I’ll update this later as I experiment further.

Update 11/26/06:
After playing a bit I am able to drag and drop music from the Zune to my computer using Windows Explorer. But I am not able to write any new data to the Zune. I get an error message “Not able to write the new folder to this location. Either the device has been unplugged or is not responding.” Even though I can continue to browse the folders on the Zune immediately following this error message. So we are close, but not quite there.

From Phaleux’s site:

“I highly recommend backing up these registry values before modifying anything. If you don’t know how to do that, I don’t recommend that you even attempt this right now =)

  1. Make sure your Zune is not plugged in and your Zune software isn’t running
  2. open up regedit by going to the start menu and selecting “run”. Type regedt32 and hit “OK”
  3. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USB\
  4. Search for “PortableDeviceNameSpace”. This should be contained in the Vid_####&Pid_####\########_-_########_-_########_-_########\Device Parameters within the above …\USB\ The ##’s listed here will be numbers and letters specific to your Zune
  5. Change the following values:
    • EnableLegacySupport to 1
    • PortableDeviceNameSpaceExcludeFromShell to 0
    • ShowInShell to 1
  6. Plug in your Zune, and make sure the Zune Software starts up.
  7. Hopefully at this point you can open up “My Computer” and browse your device, though it does NOT show up as a drive letter.”