It has happened to all of us, now it is my turn I guess 
.
My fun started when I was out in the Datacenter working on racking some new servers while listening to my iPod 5G. I just got done running some cables when suddenly my music stopped playing on my ipod. I figured I had bumped the pause button, or advanced to the next song, but.. no.. Frozen.
I ended up having to force reboot the iPod to get it to respond again. Everything seemed ok, so I just resumed my playlist from the last song I was listening to. It worked for a bit then, well, it froze again, in almost the same spot! Later on I connected the 5G to my iBook to see if everything looked ok, I started playing songs on the same playlist when iTunes froze!
Now my plan of attack was to delete the playlist (including the songs themselves off the ipod), and re-copy them back onto my ipod from the iBook so that I had fresh copies, just in case they got corrupt the first time I moved them to the iPod. I did this and everything appeared to be fine until iTunes froze Again!
This time around the ipod itself dismounted from Tiger and iTunes, so I ended up actually disconnecting it from the computer. After a few moments, I connected the iPod and got a message stating that "iTunes could not read the data on this iPod as it appears to be corrupted, Please use the restore option on the summary tab of this device". Well guess what, there was NO summary tab, and the device didn't show up on my desktop or in itunes period!
Okay now what?
Well I ended up rebooting the ipod again, and opened Disk Utility before reconnecting the iPod. As I suspected, when the ipod was rebooted it didn't see any of the music or videos I loaded onto it, it didn't have any playlists, all it kept was my language setting, date, and time.!
Possible issue with iTunes 7 that I HOPE Apple fixes
This time when I connected the ipod to my iBook it did mount to the desktop, but iTunes still didn't see it, and I didn't have a summary tab to "restore" my ipod. In my opinion this is an issue if you are supposed to manage the iPod updates and or restores from iTunes, and iTunes can't even see the iPod you need to run these tasks on in the first place! Fortunatly I have some older revisions of iPod updater software on my iBook, and they can see the iPod without issue, so can Disk utility.
What now?
Right now I am using disk utility to Zero out data on the iPod so I can start from scratch. I make images (.dmg files) of my iPods Weekly or monthly (depends on how often I use them), so I am not worried about losing any data. I also wanted to ensure that Tiger's disk utility can work with the iPod disk without running into any issues with reading or writhing. After Disk utility is done Zeroing out data, I am going to restore the iPod software using an older version, then copy songs to the iPod to run as a test. If everything goes well I will then manually bring back all songs and videos and playlists from iTunes and see how well it works after that.
Normally I would just restore from the .dmg file, but I want to be sure that it isn't corrupt itself. I am still within 1 year of buying this iPod from my local Apple store, so if this is a hardware issue, I am hoping it manifests itself again before my warranty is up in December!
Wish me luck!
< / Soapbox >
.My fun started when I was out in the Datacenter working on racking some new servers while listening to my iPod 5G. I just got done running some cables when suddenly my music stopped playing on my ipod. I figured I had bumped the pause button, or advanced to the next song, but.. no.. Frozen.
I ended up having to force reboot the iPod to get it to respond again. Everything seemed ok, so I just resumed my playlist from the last song I was listening to. It worked for a bit then, well, it froze again, in almost the same spot! Later on I connected the 5G to my iBook to see if everything looked ok, I started playing songs on the same playlist when iTunes froze!
Now my plan of attack was to delete the playlist (including the songs themselves off the ipod), and re-copy them back onto my ipod from the iBook so that I had fresh copies, just in case they got corrupt the first time I moved them to the iPod. I did this and everything appeared to be fine until iTunes froze Again!
This time around the ipod itself dismounted from Tiger and iTunes, so I ended up actually disconnecting it from the computer. After a few moments, I connected the iPod and got a message stating that "iTunes could not read the data on this iPod as it appears to be corrupted, Please use the restore option on the summary tab of this device". Well guess what, there was NO summary tab, and the device didn't show up on my desktop or in itunes period!
Okay now what?
Well I ended up rebooting the ipod again, and opened Disk Utility before reconnecting the iPod. As I suspected, when the ipod was rebooted it didn't see any of the music or videos I loaded onto it, it didn't have any playlists, all it kept was my language setting, date, and time.!
Possible issue with iTunes 7 that I HOPE Apple fixes
This time when I connected the ipod to my iBook it did mount to the desktop, but iTunes still didn't see it, and I didn't have a summary tab to "restore" my ipod. In my opinion this is an issue if you are supposed to manage the iPod updates and or restores from iTunes, and iTunes can't even see the iPod you need to run these tasks on in the first place! Fortunatly I have some older revisions of iPod updater software on my iBook, and they can see the iPod without issue, so can Disk utility.
What now?
Right now I am using disk utility to Zero out data on the iPod so I can start from scratch. I make images (.dmg files) of my iPods Weekly or monthly (depends on how often I use them), so I am not worried about losing any data. I also wanted to ensure that Tiger's disk utility can work with the iPod disk without running into any issues with reading or writhing. After Disk utility is done Zeroing out data, I am going to restore the iPod software using an older version, then copy songs to the iPod to run as a test. If everything goes well I will then manually bring back all songs and videos and playlists from iTunes and see how well it works after that.
Normally I would just restore from the .dmg file, but I want to be sure that it isn't corrupt itself. I am still within 1 year of buying this iPod from my local Apple store, so if this is a hardware issue, I am hoping it manifests itself again before my warranty is up in December!
Wish me luck!
< / Soapbox >