iPod Is my iPod hard drive dead?

[kirkbross]

I am trying to troubleshoot a friend's old 20GB iPod because it won't mount. 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 logo / icon.

Her concern is getting the songs off, not the cost of buying a new iPod.

Is there any hope?

 

[hatehereyes]

It does sound like the hard drive is dead..

 

[Merkuryy]

Yeap! If your hardrive continue to make weird noice, I highly recommend you to pull all your songs and data out "immediatelly". That's what happen with my Sony NW-HD5, luckily, about 8G of the 20G hardrive is still usable

 

[kirkbross]

Yeap! If your hardrive continue to make weird noice, I highly recommend you to pull all your songs and data out "immediatelly". That's what happen with my Sony NW-HD5, luckily, about 8G of the 20G hardrive is still usable

Yeah... that's the problem -- it won't even mount / show up on the desktop or in iTunes so I can't get the songs off at all. I think the only option would be to take it to a (very) expensive data recovery company to take apart the drive, remove the patters and place them into a working drive, etc.. -- definitely not worth the cost of the lost music.

 

[chrismacguy]

Does she have a backup of the songs anywhere, as data recovery, as you say, likely not worth it. The hard drive might mount if you pry it apart and place it (with an adapter? dunno) inside a computer and try that way.