iPod Issues - Crashed, but back from the Dead.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m wondering if anyone has had a similar experience with their iPod, and what, if any, solution might be available.

Here’s the story in a nutshell:

I’ve got an iPod Classic 80-gig. I’ve had it for about three or four years and never really had problems with it. Then one day, the battery had run out – it was a weird timing where I’d just finished listening to a podcast, and when I went to call up the next one … dead. Eh, whaddayagonnado? But when I brought it home to charge it, nothing happened. I stuck on my docking thingie and it just sat there mocking me in silence. I plugged into my PC and got the same treatment. So I figured it was deader then Elvis.

Then, in a fit of optimism, I decided to give it another chance before I flung into the bay. Lo and behold, I got a heartbeat, but barely. I got these messages via iTunes that the iPod had been corrupted and I could run some secret Steve Jobs utility to make it whole again … which I did. This of course wiped it clean, but at least it was an iPod again.

So … after re-synching it and getting all my MP3s back on there, I was relatively happy. Then I got to the J’s. Let me 'splain.

It seems that a great many of the songs which I’d re-synched to the thing either didn’t make it all the way on, or there are issues with the specific files. I’d be listening to a tune and it would just cut off halfway through. Irritating, thought I. When I found it happening to more and more songs … fucking irritating, thought I, but, you know, more vehemently.

What I think I’ve discovered is that it is only around J and K of my library that this is happening to. Billy Joel, Journey, Kinks, The Knack … those are the tunes that this cutting off thing is happening to. In the meantime, I’ve loaded the thing up with fresh podcasts and haven’t experienced any problems with those. I’m thinking there must be like a partition or something, some little section of the drive, that houses the J’s and the K’s that’s fucked.
So … anyone ever had this happen? I’m thinking of re-wiping it; emptying out my entire iTunes library; re-populating the library and re-synching in a sort of drop back ten and punt, hey I hope this works, kind of way. No? Stupid idea?

I’m going to end up just buying a new iPod, aren’t I?

2

I assume since you’ve had it for so long that it’s not covered by warranty.

One of our users where I work had a company iPad fail that wasn’t under warranty. Being the IT guy, I took it to an Apple store to find out if it was worth having repaired. It turns out they have a program where they will replace a broken iPad with a re-manufactured one for half price even if it’s not under warranty. They recycle the good parts from the broken one.

Maybe they do something similar for iPods?