I have a 15 inch imac, with OSX (latest version, all updates), a 10 gig second gen ipod, and a Western digital 80 gig firewire drive.

I have about 30 gigs of mp3s stored on my western digital firewire drive, and access them through iTunes. The WD gets is power from the wall socket, and not from the iMac.

I noticed the other day that my iPod would no longer show up in iTunes. After a couple of restores and connecting stuff in different order, i found out the following:

1. I can get the ipod to be recognized by iTunes if I boot without the Western Digital drive connected, but with the ipod connected.

2. As soon as I connect the WD drive, the iPod seems to get removed from the desktop, but it is still in itunes. However, I can't copy any files to it.

3. If i boot with the WD drive and ipod connected, both will be mounted on the desktop, and I can access both from the finder. However, the iPod will not show up in iTunes.

Now, when I first set this up, everything worked. I didn't sync my ipod for a couple of weeks, and now it no longer works.

So, does anyone know what is going on? Any suggestions for a workaround?

Thanks for any suggestions...

mesh