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iPod Itunes 6.0 killing old ipods - BIG problem!

N

nedro

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 26, 2005
4
0
Brooklyn
A big warning and request for advice.

First Itunes 6.0 killed my 40g third gen (firewire) ipod. It wouldn't eject properly and after I had to improperly disconnect it it would not mount.
I thought the ipod had just failed so I got a new one. This 5th gen (USB) works fine. But then when I plugged my daughter's 15g 3rd gen in it killed that one the same way!
Now I know something is really messed up here. Same problem as described - just an apple face but hd doesn't mount and ipod will not show up on desktop or firewire bus so there is no way to restore it. Tried hard reset many times and switching in and out of disk mode. When its on you can hear it trying to mount its HD and failing.

I went to MacForum and found many people are having the same problem on both PC and MAC. 4th gen ipods as well. Maybe its a problem with Itunes 6.0 and Firewire?

Seems almost like Apple is trying to kill off the old ipods to make folks buy new ones. And hey, I have always liked Apple, I am not a conspiracy theorist.

Any ideas?
 
my 3G iPod is perfectly fine, it is always hooked into my computer, and into iTunes a lot. Also my 4.5G iPod is fine as well.

Do they show up in disc utility to format them?

Do they show up as anything connected to the firewire slot?

have you tried to use them with a USB cable instead of firewire maybe your firewire on your computer is causing the problem and is overloading the iPod.
 
My 15 gig 3G iPod works fine with iTunes 6...never a problem plugged in with Firewire...maybe your iPod was on its way out anyway? I think that's the more likely answer.
 
Been there

Sorry, read the post carefully - 2 ipods is too much of a coincidence. Just now I thought I had it - after letting the power run out and switching it to disk mode I got it to appear on the firewire bus. I got ipod updater to start a restore and it was about 30% through it when it froze:(. Next time it only got 5% through and then the ipod stopped appearing at the bus. Now I'm running the power out again and if I can get it to appear once more my last shot will be to try and erase it in disk mode with disk utility...
 
nedro said:
Sorry, read the post carefully - 2 ipods is too much of a coincidence. Just now I thought I had it - after letting the power run out and switching it to disk mode I got it to appear on the firewire bus. I got ipod updater to start a restore and it was about 30% through it when it froze:(. Next time it only got 5% through and then the ipod stopped appearing at the bus. Now I'm running the power out again and if I can get it to appear once more my last shot will be to try and erase it in disk mode with disk utility...
Click to expand...

have you tried using USB instead of firewire?

and also i wouldn't really consider 2 iPods too much of a coincidence, remember someone was hit by lightning 6 or 7 times in his life.
 
No problems whatsoever with my 3G iPod.

I very much doubt Apple is trying to kill off older iPods, so I think the problem is at your end. Possibly, your iPods were/are old/flawed. Either that, or the other common element here appears to be your Firewire bus. Perhaps you have faulty FW connections on your Mac. Do you have other FW devices which operate correctly off the same port you're trying to use for your iPod?
 
Before jumping to any conclusions, I would erase and restore both iPods. If they fail to erase and restore then the problem is with the hard drive. I find it hardly unlikely that iTunes did anything to the hard drive itself.
 
No problems here either with the iPod in my sig. syncs fine through firewire. My iPod came as well with usb and firewire cable. However I never tried syncing with USB but it should be supported if back in the day both cables came in the box.(I believe that was standard back then, correct me if I', wrong)
 
I have no problems with my 3rd Gen 20GB, but my niece, who just got a new iPod Video, was having problems with her songs disappearing after she disconnected her iPod. I told her to restore the iPod to factory settings and it worked perfectly. Just a word of advice.
 
Sad iPod icons are caused by hardware failure, (generally HDD), and this would be unlikely to have been caused by simply unplugging from iTunes when it still stated "Do Not Disconnect". I would agree with most here and merely say that it was a coincidence that the two iPods that were about to die, died when plugged into a Mac that was running iTunes 6.0
 
Yea i hate to just agree with everyone else, but in my experience with a Shuffle, 3rd Gen and now a 5th gen they have ever been "killed" by itunes. It sounds like something else is happening that is preventing ipods from ejecting not necessarily itunes. For instance if you tried to eject the ipod icon from your desktop and something broken on every try you could argue for that but the fact you have been forced to just unplug your ipod could mean it is having problems from any number of sources.
 
Fixed!! Thanks Diskwarrior

Well, I don't want to argue with folks but this thing happened in exactly the same way with both units - maybe its a firewire prob, who knows - somehow the ipod directory was getting mangled because i could hear the thing trying to mount its hd and failing...SO (drumroll please)... I am happy to say that after much sweat I managed to fix it! Here is how:
I ran the power down. I put it in disc mode. This was the only way I could get the computer to see it at all. I put it on my ibook g4, not my g5 where the damage was done (ibook still running panther - who knows if Tiger effected things). I ran Alsoft's Diskwarrior and it saved the day. It ran repairs and then rebuilt the directory. After that the ipod apeared on the desktop as a generic disk. Then I was able to use Ipod updater to restore the original software. And now the music is loading back on it! Great! But whatever folks say I am not connecting this thing to itunes 6.0 again. I will run it on the ibook with older itunes.
 
something must be corrupt with how your G5 updates the iPods, or the firewire bus on the system itself. It seems strange that both had this problem, but troubleshooting this should start from the common denominator, in this case the G5.

Since others on here (including myself with a 15gb 3g) have had no issues with iTunes 6, I would suspect it may be something with how your system mounts, dismounts, or writes to your ipods.

Have you had issues with other firewire drives or equipment when you use your G5?
 
no I've had no other firewire problems and I use lots of firewire drives with my digital audio (protools w. digi002) setup. The new 5th gen ipod i bought works fine with the g5 but of course its usb2. If there is corruption somewhere on the g5 firewire bus, how would I diagnose/fix it? I've run the usual disk utility permission repairs. Thx for your thoughtful reply
 
I have a 30GB Photo 4th gen and I've been having problems. It started in itunes 4.9 - or something around there.
 
My 4G 40 GB iPod has been synced over FW with both iTunes 5 and 6 for Mac many times without any problems. Same with my friend's 3G 15 GB iPod over FW on Windows. I don't think it's an iTunes problem, more likely a problem with the FireWire bus or OS X install on your G5.
 
According to Toshiba, their 1.8" drives (those are the ones used in "big" iPods) have a product life of 20000 powered-up hours (that's about 2 years) to 5 years. There's no need for Apple to sneak evil death codes into new iTunes versions, because older iPods are going to start dying Real Soon Now all by themselves.
 
iMeowbot said:
According to Toshiba, their 1.8" drives (those are the ones used in "big" iPods) have a product life of 20000 powered-up hours (that's about 2 years) to 5 years. There's no need for Apple to sneak evil death codes into new iTunes versions, because older iPods are going to start dying Real Soon Now all by themselves.
Click to expand...

If you actually achieved 20k hours of uptime with an iPod, and only ran it on the battery, assuming the rated eight hours per charge of the 3G's battery, you'd have to go through about seven replacement batteries before the HD would die. :eek: :eek:

But realistically, yeah, the number of them that survive past five years will probably be relatively low. But five years isn't bad at all to me for something like this.
 
mkrishnan said:
If you actually achieved 20k hours of uptime with an iPod, and only ran it on the battery, assuming the rated eight hours per charge of the 3G's battery, you'd have to go through about seven replacement batteries before the HD would die. :eek: :eek:
Click to expand...
Some of those poor little iPods have had hard lives, pressed into service as Mac boot drives and worse! :eek: But seriously, given drive manufacturers' tendencies to gloss over averages and present numbers in the most optimistic way, it's about time for 1st to 3rd gen iPods to start coughing up blood. (despite the nice 5-year figure, Tosh are only willing to warrant them for 1 year.)
 
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