Phone Disk - free till Dec 2010

[badgoodDeb]

Free application (till Dec 1 2010) for Mac or PC. Makes your ipod/ iphone/ iPad look like a disk. Mentioned by TidBits people, who have some cred.

Looks worthwhile to download now, even if you don't yet have a need for it.
My question now -- WHERE do I properly put a file, to have it accessed by an app that wants it? For instance, I have two epub files that I haven't managed to get INTO any app willing to open them. Can someone figure out what the directory structure is, etc, and where I would drop those files?
Deb


from TidBITS#1041/23-Aug-2010

**Phone Disk Browses iOS Devices for Free Through 1 December 2010** --
For those who want direct access to their iOS device's filesystem,
Macroplant is making their Phone Disk utility available for free
through 1 December 2010. Phone Disk lets you mount your device like
any other disk and copy files to and from it, without any need for
jailbreaking. You can even copy files into app directories by
clicking the Phone Disk menu bar icon and choosing the desired app
from the Change Connection Root submenu.

<http://www.macroplant.com/phonedisk/>

Read/post comments

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/11532#comments>

(none yet, when I looked)

[FlorenceArt]

Sounds interesting! Thank you.

[badgoodDeb]

I'm finding that some (all?) of the functions require you to run in an account with ADMIN privileges. We'll see.....

[lilman]

Tried Phone Disk on Win XP with my iPad (iOS 3.2.1). The explorer menu looks like it does in the screenshots on the site, but most of the folders have nothing in them. You can access your photos (which you already could using any normal file explorer) as well as your music and videos (which are hidden to normal file explorers). Of course your music and videos are iDevice organized, so all the filenames and folders are random.

Phone Disk does not give you access to any app file space, which was the only reason I gave it a try. To me it seems like it gives you just as much access as the other available programs such as iFunBox. Looks like jailbreaking is still the only way to get reall access to an iDevice filesystem.

[murraypaul]

I think it does let you access the app space, it is just very quirky. You need to un- and re-mount the iThing each time you want to switch what filesystem you are looking at. Doing that, I could see all my Stanza files, for example.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by lilman

Tried Phone Disk on Win XP with my iPad (iOS 3.2.1). The explorer menu looks like it does in the screenshots on the site, but most of the folders have nothing in them. You can access your photos (which you already could using any normal file explorer) as well as your music and videos (which are hidden to normal file explorers). Of course your music and videos are iDevice organized, so all the filenames and folders are random.

Phone Disk does not give you access to any app file space, which was the only reason I gave it a try. To me it seems like it gives you just as much access as the other available programs such as iFunBox. Looks like jailbreaking is still the only way to get reall access to an iDevice filesystem.

Check the info and/or the web site. Somewhere I read "under the icon in the menu bar (different place for you PCs, I suppose)" you can "Change Connection Root". This brings up a whole list of the apps on the phone, and you get connected to *their* areas.

On a Mac, when I have a phone mounted, it's a selection under the line item for that phone.

I think I saw the info in the start up box, when I re-started the application itself on my mac (pc).

[lilman]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

I think it does let you access the app space, it is just very quirky. You need to un- and re-mount the iThing each time you want to switch what filesystem you are looking at. Doing that, I could see all my Stanza files, for example.

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Check the info and/or the web site. Somewhere I read "under the icon in the menu bar (different place for you PCs, I suppose)" you can "Change Connection Root". This brings up a whole list of the apps on the phone, and you get connected to *their* areas.

On a Mac, when I have a phone mounted, it's a selection under the line item for that phone.

I think I saw the info in the start up box, when I re-started the application itself on my mac (pc).

I had already read through the website and tried changing the mount point, remounting, ... I can't get access to any app filespace. It also doesn't expose all the app filespaces that iTunes does (for example, it doesn't list ComicZeal). Maybe it works better on Mac then on Win XP.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by lilman

Maybe it works better on Mac then on Win XP.

That's possible. The web page mentions one feature (re photos) that is Mac only.

The web page also has another program, also free, called iPhoneExplorer. It sounds* like it does the same thing, so I don't quite know why they have both. Perhaps it has more features for the PC?

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by lilman

I had already read through the website and tried changing the mount point, remounting, ... I can't get access to any app filespace. It also doesn't expose all the app filespaces that iTunes does (for example, it doesn't list ComicZeal). Maybe it works better on Mac then on Win XP.

What worked for me on XP:
- Disable the option to reconnect to the last mount point
- Close any open explorer window on the iPad
- Unmount, unplug, replug
- Choose mount point (do this before the next step)
- Choose show in explorer

This let me see Stanza files.
You can add additional apps that aren't in the current list if you know their magic apple file name, which I guess you could search for.