iPod ipod hd

[mattjp88]

hi all,
I read about ipods and their hard drives, and everywhere says that if the hd is bad, then it will display a sad icon on the screen. but mine is different. what happens is I sync my ipod with itunes and it works, for about 10 minutes. after that, usually after is goes to 'sleep,' I guess you could say, I wake it up and it asks for my language and then my whole ipod is cleared. To me, that means the hd is bad. But i can't find anywhere that says anything of this nature. Also, when it starts up, it takes a really long time and I can hear the hd clicking in groups of 7 clicks. So my question: does this sound like a hd issue?

So given that the hd is bad, is the only source for replacement drives those online stores selling hds for ipods only? Or are the drive just some generic drive that is used in notebooks or something that apple just so happens to use in the ipods? It's a 4th gen, 20gb. not photo or u2, just the standard white one.

Thanks for your help.

-Matt

EDIT
I did some looking, and I can get the same hd that is in this ipod for $60. So that is nice. But is there any alternative that is cheaper, or is that the best I am going to get? But I am still wondering if this is indeed a hd issue.

 

[CanadaRAM]

iPod hard drives are not the same as laptop drives.

Your problem may be battery rather than hard drive?

 

[mattjp88]

is there any way of determining for sure which piece (hd or battery) is at fault?

 

[mkrishnan]

Yes... you can bring the hard drive of the iPod up in Disk Utility and verify / repair it.

 

[mattjp88]

right now I have it booted in diagnostic mode running hdd scan, which I'm assuming is scanning the hd. the disc utility you speak of. is that on the computer or on the ipod somewhere?

 

[mkrishnan]

It's in the /Applications/Utilities folder on your Mac (assuming you have one). Not sure what/how the similar thing you can do from Windows is. I guess it's worth a try to see if the problem is a corrupt disk structure on the iPod -- in this case, it's going to look for *logical* and not *physical* problems with the disk. For instance, if the directory structure is corrupt, it could confuse the iPod and make it unable to open the files it wrote on itself, and so think that it's being booted for the first time. Does that seem reasonable?

 

[mattjp88]

ok, so I ran a few diagnostic tests, and now it works. well, almost. Some of the songs skip. But I think it is due to the ipod freezing. When I try to skip songs or navigate the menus, it is very sluggish. When I say sluggish, I mean 5 or 10 seconds for me to skip a song. But it does play, so I am one step closer.

I read about ipods have cache. Is that just a part of the hd or is it a seperate flash memory unit? Is this sounding like a hd issue? Because the ipod doesn't shut off or anything like that. Ideas?

Thanks...

 

[MacBass]

Not to hijack the thread, but I'm fixing up a 4th Gen iPod for a friend, and after charging for a while, the sad icon comes up. Now iFixit.com states that this is a logic board issue, yet when I tried starting the iPod up, the hard drive sounded like it was trying to spin up, but was unsuccessful. I'm thinking its the HDD.