iPod Did iTunes 7 really kill my iPod?

[dylanemcgregor]

So I've belatedly read some of the problems that people have been having with iTunes 7 after it seems that my 4G iPod is hosed. A few weeks ago I updated to 7 and noticed that after that iTunes was really slow to respond. I'm on a 7 year old PowerMac, so no real surprise there, but when I was trying to copy a short podcast over to the iPod, Itunes froze up on me. I left it on overnight, but came back to a still frozen application, so I did a force quit. After that I got the sad mac face on the iPod.

When you try to turn it on you can hear the hard drive start to spin up, but then it makes some loud clicking noises and stops. It repeats this 4 or 5 times before stopping for good.

So it seems like my iPod is probably done for, but before it gets forgotten in the sock drawer I wanted to see if there is anything I should try besides using the restore command from iTunes and the Disk Utility? Can you get replacement drives for a 4G iPod? I'd really like to have a 40 Gb drive...

 

[lamina]

The drive definitely has all the symptoms of being dead.

When you plug it in (firewire or usb) does it mount? If you only see the symbol on the iPod and hear the clicking, the hard drive is dead.

Replacement drives can be found on eBay.

If you're going to buy a hard drive, make sure to get it new. I have had trouble with a couple used drives from eBay.

These are good instructions on how to replace it. It's really easier than it looks. I wouldn't use a metal screwdriver though. I would use a plastic card (like a debit card).

 

[sonofjabba]

4th gens are easiest to open with a ipod tool a fine flat screw driver. You get the tool into the space between one of the long sides and pull back on the metal back. when you get it pulled back a 1/16 of an inch you can get a screwdriver down to the bottom or close to the bottom of one of the top half tangs, then pry it apart carefully. Do this on a towel or a fabric cover mousepad so you don't scratch up your pod.

I've found this is the fastest and least painful way of opening these ipods. If you don't mine the size decrease I can hook with a location where you can get recond 5Gig hard drives cheap..

 

[dylanemcgregor]

Thanks for the responses. The iPod does mount, at least most of the time. iTunes recognized it, and then tried to restore it. This didn't work at all at first, and iTunes came back with an error message that I've googled for and found most often seems to come up with shuffles and iTunes 7.

After I updated iTunes to the latest point release it gave me the chance to restore again, and this time it seemed to go through, only to freeze a short time later when trying to sync.

What's a general ball park figure for the cost of a hard drive for a 4G ipod? Currently I have a 20GB hard drive in mine, but I'd really like to go bigger as mine was at capacity and I still haven't ripped all my music yet.

Cheers,
Dylan

 

[lamina]

Check eBay, like I said, and make sure that the drive is new.

It'll probably cost you around $100USD for a new drive.

 

[Fearless Leader]

you better know what you are doing. I'd say this is gonna be tough. You are going to have to be able back up the disk layout of the old ipod and reapply it perfectly on the new drive which requires the terminal and the command pdisk.

I'm talking from experience from my 3rd gen but If you blank out the drive the computer wont recognize it as an ipod.

edit: After some looking around if you have a 4th gen with a blanked out drive the mac will recognize it.