alas for packrat tendencies

[kate_nepveu]

When I came home tonight I dropped my iPod on the floor. After refusing to play, it displays a red "X" when I try to reset it or get it into disk mode per the online support instructions. So I suspect I have wrecked the hard drive, again.

(I think this is the third one. Maybe the fourth.)

I should really get a Flash-based player, because, obviously, carrying around a small hard drive is just always going to end badly for a klutz like me. But Chad has way more music than would fit on any currently-available one (even if they weren't so much more expensive), and every so often I go through the songs of his that I haven't rated yet and find stuff I know and/or like, and I never listen to music except when away from my computer, and I like the ability to watch video too, and and and . . . Like I said, packrat tendencies.

I console myself with the truth that this is a very First World problem to have.

Anyway. Have any of you successfully overcome a tendency to break portable hard drives? Any cases you'd recommend? I use a Contour Showcase, but if anything is actually going to help when I drop the thing while the drive is spinning, obviously it'd be worth it.