We recently wrote about the possibility of using your Windows Phone 7 device as a mass storage unit. However, as recently posted by Paul Thurott, this is potentially a bad idea. The reasoning is not entirely clear, but it goes something like this: Windows Phone 7 needs to be able to identify everything in its system. It was not designed for mass storage, and doing so could potentially damage your phones filesystem. To quote Joe Belfiore:

“Windows Phone is not a mass storage device. It’s a Zune device. The data on the phone must be consistent, and needs to be able to identify items in storage. We don’t want the user to have to do that stuff manually. Yes, some may want to. But we wanted a synchronization system that was simple and easy and does metadata mappings automatically.”

Long story short, manually placing files on your Windows Phone 7 device could potentially screw up your device's filesystem, and adverse affects could result. Of course, if you're willing to take chances, feel free to do so, but just don't call Microsoft's tech support complaining.

[Via: Windows Phone Secrets]