Mrs Jjimm has an iPod Mini - two or three years old. All was well and good with it until this evening. I plugged it into the PC to copy some new music onto it, and got an “update firmware” message. This I did, but halfway through it said “Disk write error”. Unplugging it I got the “folder structure screwed!” icon on the iPod. Resigned to losing all the music, I then reformatted its disk using Windows XP (perhaps my mistake), and then used the “restore” function on the firmware updater. “Disk write error” again, and the same icon when unplugged.
I know iPods have a bad reputation for disk failures, so I’m fairly sure it’s dead, but I wonder if there’s an outside chance of rescuing it?
This is a complete wipe of the little beastie’s drive, and hopefully, that’s all you’ll need.
This page has some more tips on making sure the computer itself is up to date and for finding corrupt music files. It’s possible that your problem is a bad MP3, and the iPod itself is fine. The trick is finding it.
One other “feature” I neglected to mention was that before I formatted it using XP, I looked at the drive using Windows and there were hundreds of files in the root of the drive, all with garbage names.
When you formatted it, what file system did you use? I’m wondering if you might have formatted it as NTFS or something, which the restore function (if this doesn’t repartition/reformat for itself - I’m not familiar with it) might not be able to write to/read from.
I’ll just come out with the bad news: if you get an error attempting to restore the iPod, then the hard drive is bad. Needs a repair, which last I checked is equal or greater to the cost of a new iPod. (It’s kind of like needing an engine rebuild on a car.)
Google for “ipod repair” to find third-party sites who might charge less than Apple for the service. Otherwise, it might be time to start looking at the iPod nano!
Dunno, will check that. XP definitely appeared to read something. But yes, happywaffle is probably correct, though since it happened during a firmware update, there’s an outside chance it’s a software error.
Yeah, it seems to be stretching coincidence to the extreme that the hard drive would choose that time to crash. But I don’t have any better advice than to reset the iPod and try the Restore again. Make sure your cables are firmly connected and all that.
Do you get anything at all if you put the iPod in hard drive mode and try reading it?
I accidentally formatted my Nano by leaving it plugged in and rebooting. My computer saw it was attached and formatted it with NTFS. I did the Apple restore procedure and all was cool.
I followed your advice and reformatted it. At first, Windows didn’t recognise it as a disk, but I suspect this might have been a dodgy connection. Removed the girly pink rubber cover that my dear wife favors, and plugged it in. Bada bing, RAW formatted 3 gig disk. I tried the iPod restore software, but “disk error” again. Reformatted it trying NTFS. “This disk cannot support NTFS” or words to that effect. Tried FAT32. Windows, no problem - wrote and retrieved a file to it. iPod restore: “disk error”. Tried FAT. Windows no problem. iPod restore: “disk error”.
I’m at a loss; clearly the disk is in fact fine. Something else is shagged. Seems a shame to throw it away based on this.
Hmmm. Changed policy for the disk and achieved an NTFS format. When it comes to “creating file system structure” DOS tells me that “the first and second NTFS boot sectors are unwriteable. Cannot continue. Format failed”. So, is that a feature of an iPod, or is it actually truly shagged?
NTFS isn’t going to work for the iPod; it’s a file system peculiar to Microsoft. I would imaginf the native format is going to be FAT of some kind.
Weird that Windows can format the disk, but the Apple software doesn’t want to know; I don’t think this is an actual hardware problem as such, but maybe a problem with the master boot record or some sort of weird partitioning glitch. I don’t have any fresh ideas on how to fix it though.
I had a similar problem with a a Nano. I followed Apple’s restore instructions mulitple times to no avail. What finally worked was I borrowed a Mac laptop did the restore/firmware update on it with that. Then I put it back on my windows box. It said this ipod needs to be formatted for Windows, let it do it’s magic and now it works just fine.
This was going to be my suggestion. My ancient iPod was becoming increasingly erratic, and all the resets and restores did nothing until I tried it from a Mac. Fixed everything except the knackered battery.
