I’ve mentioned the Zune, I’ve seen it in Best Buy, I even despise the Zune. But I’m mentioning this hack (and this is truly the definition of a hack) of Microsoft’s Zune (iPod Knock-off) simply because I find it quite intriguing.

So if you took the plunge and bought a Zune (I pity you), there is indeed a way to set your Zune up as a hard drive. Turns out it’s just a regedit hack. Though there is no letter, it does show up in “My Computer” and you can drag and drop files.

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.

Just like that, your Zune is now worthy of an iPod (which is $.99 cheaper). Okay, not quite, but at least you can more use out of it. Hack away!

How to copy data off your Zune [Phaleux via Gizmodo]