Thursday, October 05, 2006

iPod Woes: Overcome!

It wasn’t short or easy, but I’ve got my iPod 4G back working from the troubles I’ve already talked about.  It took the nice adapter mentioned on Command-Tab’s blog, plus a combination of SpinRite and WipeDrive.

I popped the iPod’s case apart using a putty knife — you’ll need something thin and absolutely rigid to pop the case.  After that it’s a matter of carefully separating the two halves and folding them apart since there’s a thin ribbon cable connecting the two.  The mini-drive gets separated from its connector and attached to the adapters referenced above.  Now you just need to get an IDE cable and power connector free to hook your iPod drive into.

Eight hours later, I’d successfully run a level 4 pass with SpinRite and used WipeDrive to make sure all contents were scrubbed from the disk.  SpinRite didn’t find any outright bad sectors on the drive, but its reformat/refresh always seems to help out cranky disks.

The bottom line is that my iPod is back up and running, and I’m much happier for it.

Now I just need to get a new receiver in my car so I can jack the iPod directly in.  I’ve got a Belkin FM transmitter which lets me get iPod content into my receiver, but it’s crappy fidelity and you have to constantly change channels if you’re driving any distance.  I’ll be spending some time at Crutchfield to sort out the right unit.  I’ll share that when I’ve figured it out…

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the amazing advice.

Now if only I could find the many faulty iPods I've packed away in boxes somewhere!

Subscribe (RSS)

The Leadership Journey