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If you can press buttons, you can repair your iPod
FatmanGames
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My story:
A week or two ago, my iPod started acting up pretty severely. In the middle of a song or a podcast, it'd freeze up for several seconds. Sometimes it'd go back to playing, other times it'd just hang. I tried a "Restore" in iTunes, and it got WORSE.
I held it up to my ear, to hear clickclickclickclickwhirrrrclickclickclickclick. If you're a computer guy, you're probably aware that a clicking hard drive is bad.
The Apple store told me it'd be $140 to fix my 5G iPod Video. The hard drive was bad, you see.
I didn't think that was very fair, because my original unit died on me two weeks before my warranty was up, and the replacement they sent me died about 30-60 days after the "extra" 90 day warranty on the refurbished unit.
I decided to look up how to repair the iPod on my own. There are a shocking amount of options, tips, and tricks out there. Since they worked for me, I thought I'd share.
I know that some of this info may be old news for some, but it was news to me...
The iPod (and the Zune) have pretty detailed Diagnostic Menus. A Diagnostic Mode / menu is built into nearly every electronic product out there, including TVs, so that technitions can figure out what's wrong with them. Just as an FYI.
Anyway, each generation of iPod is different, but here's how you get into the 5G's diag menu:
1. Reboot the iPod by holding down Select and Menu.
2. While the iPod is in its reboot sequence (with the Apple logo showing), hold down Select and Rewind.
This will give you a series of tests that you can run.
Here's a handy visual guide for getting into your Diag Menu.
One of the tests is a Harddrive Read/Write test, which will typically solve problems - it'll mark bad sectors as bad so that your iPod doesn't try to write to them, for instance.
Unfortunately, mine being a service unit, I had a slightly different menu, which didn't include the two hard drive tests.
What to do?
Well, I did a "low level format" of my iPod's hard drive (not my term, to me, this is just a regular format) . There's a second mode you can force the iPod into, called Disk Mode.
1. Reboot the iPod using Select and Menu, as before.
2. While rebooting, hold Select and Play.
When in this mode, select the drive in Windows Explorer, right click, click Format, and be sure that "quick format" is unchecked. I don't think it matters what format you choose, but I used Fat32.
This process took forever.
After the process was nearly complete, my Vista machine said "Windows was unable to complete the operation." At that point, the iPod rebooted repeatedly, clicking as it did so.
"Oh crap," thought I, "I really screwed this thing up this time."
I put the iPod into disk mode again, and ran the iTunes restore option. That took a little while, and it made me rename my iPod.
But now, it works perfectly. It's amazing, it's like nothing ever happened. Took the iPod from completely useless, to completely functional.
The only thing different is that now when I plug in my iPod to iTunes, it registers a sliver of space as "used" by "Other" (vs video or music). It's about 100MB. I'm assuming that's the set of bad sectors, because that wasn't there before.
I'm sure that my hard drive will eventually fail, and this is life support at best, but much like the 360 "towel trick", I figure this could give you folks some help.
Along the way, I discovered that:
1. Replacing the hard drive isn't that hard, and I can increase my storage.
2. I can replace the battery much less expensively than Apple, and get much more time out of it.
3. I found a ton of sites that are just great for iPod information.
Here's one of my new favorites for the articles: Method Shop (link goes to do-it-yourself repair pages).
A week or two ago, my iPod started acting up pretty severely. In the middle of a song or a podcast, it'd freeze up for several seconds. Sometimes it'd go back to playing, other times it'd just hang. I tried a "Restore" in iTunes, and it got WORSE.
I held it up to my ear, to hear clickclickclickclickwhirrrrclickclickclickclick. If you're a computer guy, you're probably aware that a clicking hard drive is bad.
The Apple store told me it'd be $140 to fix my 5G iPod Video. The hard drive was bad, you see.
I didn't think that was very fair, because my original unit died on me two weeks before my warranty was up, and the replacement they sent me died about 30-60 days after the "extra" 90 day warranty on the refurbished unit.
I decided to look up how to repair the iPod on my own. There are a shocking amount of options, tips, and tricks out there. Since they worked for me, I thought I'd share.
I know that some of this info may be old news for some, but it was news to me...
The iPod (and the Zune) have pretty detailed Diagnostic Menus. A Diagnostic Mode / menu is built into nearly every electronic product out there, including TVs, so that technitions can figure out what's wrong with them. Just as an FYI.
Anyway, each generation of iPod is different, but here's how you get into the 5G's diag menu:
1. Reboot the iPod by holding down Select and Menu.
2. While the iPod is in its reboot sequence (with the Apple logo showing), hold down Select and Rewind.
This will give you a series of tests that you can run.
Here's a handy visual guide for getting into your Diag Menu.
One of the tests is a Harddrive Read/Write test, which will typically solve problems - it'll mark bad sectors as bad so that your iPod doesn't try to write to them, for instance.
Unfortunately, mine being a service unit, I had a slightly different menu, which didn't include the two hard drive tests.
What to do?
Well, I did a "low level format" of my iPod's hard drive (not my term, to me, this is just a regular format) . There's a second mode you can force the iPod into, called Disk Mode.
1. Reboot the iPod using Select and Menu, as before.
2. While rebooting, hold Select and Play.
When in this mode, select the drive in Windows Explorer, right click, click Format, and be sure that "quick format" is unchecked. I don't think it matters what format you choose, but I used Fat32.
This process took forever.
After the process was nearly complete, my Vista machine said "Windows was unable to complete the operation." At that point, the iPod rebooted repeatedly, clicking as it did so.
"Oh crap," thought I, "I really screwed this thing up this time."
I put the iPod into disk mode again, and ran the iTunes restore option. That took a little while, and it made me rename my iPod.
But now, it works perfectly. It's amazing, it's like nothing ever happened. Took the iPod from completely useless, to completely functional.
The only thing different is that now when I plug in my iPod to iTunes, it registers a sliver of space as "used" by "Other" (vs video or music). It's about 100MB. I'm assuming that's the set of bad sectors, because that wasn't there before.
I'm sure that my hard drive will eventually fail, and this is life support at best, but much like the 360 "towel trick", I figure this could give you folks some help.
Along the way, I discovered that:
1. Replacing the hard drive isn't that hard, and I can increase my storage.
2. I can replace the battery much less expensively than Apple, and get much more time out of it.
3. I found a ton of sites that are just great for iPod information.
Here's one of my new favorites for the articles: Method Shop (link goes to do-it-yourself repair pages).
FatmanGames on
0
Posts
Good information for other people. When I worked at Best Buy I used almost all of these repairs to fix the iPods so we didn't have to ship the unit out. (That would have taken 2 weeks to come back, broken again)
So I took the thing apart.
In doing so, I damaged the ribbon cable from the LCD screen.
Whoops.
Ah well, I'm just going to sell the logic board, battery, and HDD on eBay I guess.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
Actually, you can buy replacement LCD screens pretty cheap, and they include the cables - I'll see if I can find a link (although I don't know if I'd want to "advertise" a site I haven't used).
I think you can look online. There are some places that offer pictures of the different iPods to help you find out.
True, but buying a new LCD screen isn't going to solve my problem of the buttons not working.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
I linked to a visual guide above - you don't need to know what your iPod is, just what the wheel looks like.
maximumzero - Riiiiight. Duh. Sorry about that.
My iPod has a similar problem - tracks freezing up, etc. I tried to update the software via iTunes, and that didn't help. I can't remember if I then tried to format the thing or not (my first attempt at fixing it using Apple's tools was a couple months ago), but I'm stuck now.
I've tried using these diagnostic menus, but it simply won't start up. Every so often I'll get a batter icon with a ! symbol, and it will just stay at that screen for a while (even if plugged in). Occasionally it'll display the 'Do Not Disconnect' screen (with an empty battery meter) but iTunes doesn't recognize that it's there at all (and I can't for it into any of the diagnostic modes).
Does anyone have ANY idea what's wrong with this brick, and what I can do to fix it?
[Edit] I should also note, if I plug it in to charge it shows NOTHING, no charge meter whatsoever....
My iPod always sits in disk mode, even when I've told it not to. The only time it doesn't is when I've JUST told it not to in iTunes - but the next time I take it out and put it back in, it'll be in disk mode.
Any ideas?
No gods or kings. Only man.
If it's still under warranty, they'll replace the unit for free. this happened to my sister's iPod twice, and they promptly replaced it both times. Apparently the unit is truly borked if what you're describing is happening.
If you have a dead HDD, try throwing your ipod on the ground as hard as you can. I swear to god, it works. I was skeptical, but I've seen 3 ipods raise from the dead via this method, my own included.
EDIT: Of course, do this at your own risk. But I've done it and I think it works.
I just tried that, and..... It fucking worked.
I'm telling you, it's the damnedest thing. I was skeptical, and I have no idea why it works, but it does.
You're causing damage rollover.
It's like when you get a REALLY high score in an arcade game, then it suddenly resets back to 0. Except, you know, with damage.
Yeah, it didn't work for me. I never even thought about looking around for a way to get into its diagnostic mode.
I, too, was skeptical of this. But since my wife's iPod has been dead for 6 months and is way beyond warranty, I decided to give it a whirl. You don't necessarily have to throw as hard as possible, I found. Just a nice thwacking on the base will suffice. It took three hits to the base (connector end), and suddenly the LCD screen that had only shown sad iPod faces before was now lighting up and back to life. Now I'm off to do the diagnostics and see if this can be salvaged.
BTW, the jolt is not for the hard drive itself, but for the connection between the HDD and connecting cable, which apparently was a bit sketchy on older generations. YMMV, of course.
my iPod decides to not let me change the volume every so often, although i can scroll through songs just fine.
It will then tell me that the battery is dead, and turn off, I then turn it back on, and play it for another 45 min. it will then tell me the battery is dead, and turn off. I then turn it back on, and play it for another 45 minutes.
that gets very annoying.
hopefully this can fix it.