Bad hard drive on iPod?

[kirkbross]

I'm posting here because the only other iPod forum is "iPod Touch Hacks"... hopefully it's the right place.

I am trying to troubleshoot a friend's old 20GB iPod because it won't mount. I can hear the drive revving up and down like a CD player playing a corrupt disc... it just keeps revving up and down in bursts never mounts.

Is the content on this iPod completely lost?

(My friend said she said she took it into an Apple Care specialist and they said it's the hard drive and that there's nothing they could do but that there may be a third party solution).

 

[LtRammstein]

Well, you are posting in the wrong forum, but I'll help anyways.

You can try and force the iPod into a disk mode. Press and hold the Play and Select buttons until you see the screen turn into the screen you see when you connect it to the computer.

If it mounts, then it's a controller and/or a hard drive head issue and you can restore the device to factory settings. If it doesn't mount then there's another major error and you're better off getting a new iPod. Luckly the Apple store has a deal going on where you can give them your iPod and you get 10% off your next iPod.

 

[emt1]

In case you're wondering... the right forum would have been here..

https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/75/

 

[kirkbross]

Well, you are posting in the wrong forum, but I'll help anyways.

You can try and force the iPod into a disk mode. Press and hold the Play and Select buttons until you see the screen turn into the screen you see when you connect it to the computer.

If it mounts, then it's a controller and/or a hard drive head issue and you can restore the device to factory settings. If it doesn't mount then there's another major error and you're better off getting a new iPod. Luckly the Apple store has a deal going on where you can give them your iPod and you get 10% off your next iPod.

Thank you... unfortunately, I think it's just dead. When I force disc mode (or plug it in via FireWire) the drive just continually revvs, ticks and repeats every three seconds, like it's trying to mount, but never does. The screen alternates between displaying a 1) folder icon with an exclamation point 2) a 'DO NOT DISCONNECT, charging' message and 3) the Apple icon.