In the middle of our planning for an out-of-civilization-shooting with EX1, we kind of hit the wall:

How do we backup the source material while en route?
Burning DVDs is too time consuming and cumbersome during the trip.
To work with as many SDHC cards as budgetwise possible has top priority.
Next lower level would be an SSD drive (128 GB min., 265 GB max.) to replace the laptop's internal drive and put the old HD or a larger one into an external 2.5" enclosure with firewire ports.

Now someone came up with an emergency solution: Reformat one or more of our iPods if necessary and subsequently use them as external backup drive(s). Has anyone ever used an iPod as backup medium? Any Experiences?

FYI, we have modded our iPods with larger HDs.

can you just get a travel HD, something like a western digital that is powered off the USB port? I have one of them I take with me when I travel just to be safe, it works like a champ. fairly cheap too.

....ever used an iPod as backup medium? Any Experiences?

I used to use an ipod as backup with the XPLAY software, on a PC. Worked very well.

I noticed a couple days ago that Best Buy is now selling Mac formatted USB/FW800 portable hard drives in the new 500 GB size. Just bought one and it works great (but they ain't cheap at $250). 500GB ought to be plenty for you right? They aren't much bigger than a cigarette pack.

I don't think there is enough space on the hard drive for HD material...

I'd look into using the Western Digital passport drives.... they have one that is 500gb and runs native from
most laptop ports...

I use a 500GB LaCie rugged with FW 400/800, doesn't need any power and is very fast, couldn't go without it.