A while back, my 4G 20 gig iPod stopped responding. The hard drive began making the dreaded "clicks of death", and the sick iPod icon appeared, all about 3 weeks after the warranty ended. I kicked myself, assuming it had finally succumbed to my rather brutish treatment, and put it up on my shelf to be repaired when I could scrape together the funds.
As it sat, I "borrowed" (read: hijacked) my wife's 4gig iPod mini (luckily, she'd selected a color that I could be seen with in public). I gave it something of a beating over the past three months, but the coup de grace came about a week ago...
While walking briskly across the street, my hand caught my headphone cord, detaching the cord from the iPod and sending the iPod out of my coat pocket and falling to the ground. I realized this about 5 seconds later, and turned to retreive the iPod from the street only to watch as a black Ford Focus ran right over it, its right tire rolling right over the iPod. "My wife is going to kill me...," I thought.
I picked it up and checked out the damage. Luckily, the iPod had fallen with its back facing the sky. I picked it up, and found it in fairly good condition cosmetically and was pleased to find that the display, at least, hadn't taken any damage. Displays are particularly sensitive to being squashed.
I plugged my headphones in and found that the music hadn't missed a beat. Encouraged by this, I start testing the click wheel and - to my amazement - every single control on it worked. The hold button worked. Other than some rather obvious (but small) blemishes on the front and slight warping around the click wheel from its encounter with the pavement, the iPod worked flawlessly! I walked away with a smile, and even though my wife says her iPod isn't as "cute" any more, it still works like a charm one week later.
The even better news, however, is that as I was cleaning I ran across my old iPod on my desk. I decided it was about time to send it in for repairs, but I'd give it one more shot to work. I plugged it in and, voila! The computer actually found it! The hard drive worked! Not well, mind you, it was having problems and would go out every now and then, but I would now have the chance to finally download a lot of photos and other items I thought were previously lost! I copied them as quickly as possible (the hard drive would drop out after each 100 megs or so, then come back on for no apparent reason). The drive was a champ - it kept working as I transferred all 9 gigs to my iBook and was still working, so I decided it was time to try Disk Utility on it once again (I'd tried it and other tricks countless times when it first died to get a pulse out of the iPod) to see if I could get it to work on a more permanent basis, "maybe the hard drive problems have some software related root?," I thought.
Well, after about ten minutes of that I did some "practice" transfers and found the drive had stopped locking up every few megs. Bingo! It worked again! It was entirely inexplicable - letting it sit on the shelf for a few months shouldn't have worked, and I know for a fact I did everything possible to fix it when the problem first occurred - but now, after a format and clean sweep of the drive, it worked perfectly! It has for the last four days, and while I listen for that terrible click everytime the hard drive starts, I haven't heard it since!
Maybe my luck with my 4G iPod will run out sooner than later, but I'm very glad to have it around until that happens, and much happier to have those photos and files back.
Anyone else have similar tales of their death-defying iPod?
As it sat, I "borrowed" (read: hijacked) my wife's 4gig iPod mini (luckily, she'd selected a color that I could be seen with in public). I gave it something of a beating over the past three months, but the coup de grace came about a week ago...
While walking briskly across the street, my hand caught my headphone cord, detaching the cord from the iPod and sending the iPod out of my coat pocket and falling to the ground. I realized this about 5 seconds later, and turned to retreive the iPod from the street only to watch as a black Ford Focus ran right over it, its right tire rolling right over the iPod. "My wife is going to kill me...," I thought.
I picked it up and checked out the damage. Luckily, the iPod had fallen with its back facing the sky. I picked it up, and found it in fairly good condition cosmetically and was pleased to find that the display, at least, hadn't taken any damage. Displays are particularly sensitive to being squashed.
I plugged my headphones in and found that the music hadn't missed a beat. Encouraged by this, I start testing the click wheel and - to my amazement - every single control on it worked. The hold button worked. Other than some rather obvious (but small) blemishes on the front and slight warping around the click wheel from its encounter with the pavement, the iPod worked flawlessly! I walked away with a smile, and even though my wife says her iPod isn't as "cute" any more, it still works like a charm one week later.
The even better news, however, is that as I was cleaning I ran across my old iPod on my desk. I decided it was about time to send it in for repairs, but I'd give it one more shot to work. I plugged it in and, voila! The computer actually found it! The hard drive worked! Not well, mind you, it was having problems and would go out every now and then, but I would now have the chance to finally download a lot of photos and other items I thought were previously lost! I copied them as quickly as possible (the hard drive would drop out after each 100 megs or so, then come back on for no apparent reason). The drive was a champ - it kept working as I transferred all 9 gigs to my iBook and was still working, so I decided it was time to try Disk Utility on it once again (I'd tried it and other tricks countless times when it first died to get a pulse out of the iPod) to see if I could get it to work on a more permanent basis, "maybe the hard drive problems have some software related root?," I thought.
Well, after about ten minutes of that I did some "practice" transfers and found the drive had stopped locking up every few megs. Bingo! It worked again! It was entirely inexplicable - letting it sit on the shelf for a few months shouldn't have worked, and I know for a fact I did everything possible to fix it when the problem first occurred - but now, after a format and clean sweep of the drive, it worked perfectly! It has for the last four days, and while I listen for that terrible click everytime the hard drive starts, I haven't heard it since!
Maybe my luck with my 4G iPod will run out sooner than later, but I'm very glad to have it around until that happens, and much happier to have those photos and files back.
Anyone else have similar tales of their death-defying iPod?