Page 1 of Ipods...

Might be better suited to the PC & Mobile forum but wasn`t sure... anyway:
One of my mates has a 3rd Gen 20 gig original iPod (the one with the 4 buttons on front and only charges via firewire! :-o), it now has the sad faced iPod and the exclamation marked folder icons.
Also seems to try to boot up then fails, restarts and begins the loop again, over and over.
Pretty sure I can say it`s a faulty hard drive.

Now, bearing in mind this is an OLD iPod, and a small one, does anyone have any links etc. to anywhere that sell hard drives for them at a reasonable price?
I`ve been all over Fleabay, seems the going rate on there is £30 to £40 which in my eyes, is a bit nuts for such an old player and would be better spent going towards a new one.
(A couple were slightly cheaper or larger but once you added postage it was back to daft money)

Or are there any other alternatives? ie: Can you use a large sized CF card etc?

Jimbo : oÞ

"Making Teenagers depressed is like shooting fish inna barrel"

[bump]

Anyone.....?

Jimbo : oÞ

"Making Teenagers depressed is like shooting fish inna barrel"

Was tempted to rely yesterday but thought better of it. Seeing as you`ve bumped it though, wouldn`t it just be easier to buy a new one?

---------

Si Wooldridge
Reviewer



synth.myreviewer.com

I agree with Si...the cost & hassle of replacing the drive (if it even is the drive that`s failed - since you don`t know that 100%) would not make it worth it in my opinion.

I think the money would be better spent on a newer model.

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he`ll be warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett.

You can convert many of the older Ipods to use CompactFlash cards instead of hard drives. They are more reliable, being solid-state, and now very cheap (16Gb CF card for about £20)
Youll need a compact flash to 1.8" adaptor - I bought one on dealextreme for a few dollars. Simply open your ipod, unplug the failed hard drive and replace it with the CF card and adaptor. When you plug your ipod back into your computer, use iTunes to restore it to factory settings and you`re done!
If you own an ipod mini, you don`t even need an adaptor - a compactflash card will plug straight in.
I`ve converted an Ipod mini myself and tried a CF card in an old 3rd generation ipod (white) just to see if it worked. For less than £25 you can upgrade your old ipod to 16Gb solid state flash memory. The equivalent 16Gb ipod nano or touch new would cost more than £140 so there is a huge cost saving to be made, and it`s environmentally friendly to repair rather than throw away.

Miles and Si, you`re thinking same lines as me but as he`s a decent mate I was hoping to find a cheap option for him. He`s also in the same frame of mind that £30+ is too much to spend on such an old piece of equipment.

Hamid... I was thinking along those lines as I have been thinking of doing this for my laptop and my main PC boot drive.
Can you plug a CF card directly into a 3rd gen or does it also need the adapter?

Jimbo : oÞ

"Making Teenagers depressed is like shooting fish inna barrel"

Jimbo, tell your friend to throw his ipod very firmly from hand to hand , as you would a cricket ball before bowling a rocket of a Yorker.

I think he may find it does the trick.

Report back :)

LOL Mike, it`s not a damaged or loose hard drive connector.
I`ve finally got it open, just don`t have the correct stuff to fit it into a PC, ie: USB enclosure for 1.8" drives.

Was watching one on Fleabay but someone bid it to over £21... don`t see the point of a bid that high when there are others still wrapped and BIN for similar, albeit inclusive of delivery.

Jimbo : oÞ

"Making Teenagers depressed is like shooting fish inna barrel"

You don`t need to buy a USB to 1.8" hard drive enclosure - your iPod is one!
You just need to charge the battery, connect the USB cable and press a couple of buttons to put it into Disk mode. See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1363
Once in Disk mode, you can connect it to your PC and it will be like a USB to 1.8" adaptor. You can run any PC utilities to format or correct errors on the hard drive (e.g. ScanDisk). Remember you`ll need to restore your ipod using iTunes if you format the hard drive or delete the system files from it. If that happens, the ipod shows a folder with an exclamation mark, usually.
In answer to your other question, yes it is possible to use a CF card in a PC instead of a hard drive, with one limitation. Flash memory has a limited number of re-write cycles. This is not a problem in most applications but some operating systems like Windows use Virtual Memory. This means that Windows will constantly write to your flash card, eventually wearing it out. You can turn off virtual memory in Windows. That will help, but performance will suffer, particularly if you don`t have much RAM. Another option is to use a distribution of Linux that installs to an image file on your flash drive and doesn`t write to it. I successfully installed Slax onto a small flash card <512Mb. The advantage is that the Linux image file cannot be altered easily, thus preventing viruses. Unfortunately it means that making changes or updates is more difficult.
Read more about installing Linux to flash drives at http://www.pendrivelinux.com