hamyam

Hi just got hold of a second hand ipod 20 GB and had to replace the battery. I know the hard drive was working as it had songs on it but after installing itunes I reformatted it. Now its saying the hard drive is corrupt and when I go into the settings its saying the hard drive capacities 18.5 gb and available its2.3 gb. Is there a way to fix it?

mart360

you need to let itunes reformat & repair the corrupt drive..

you could also try accessing the diagnostics menu (google search) and get the pod to interrogate its fimware & h/w

Mart

Markus

Have a look here for info on how to put the iPod into diagnostic mode that Mart mentions.

It does look as though it is corrupted in some way. You may be able to use something like Anapod Extreme to get the music files off it as it sounds as though the iTunes Database on it is corrupted which will cause iTunes to not display the music on the iPod and iTunes does not let you copy music from the iPod to the computer, but Anapod will let you do this.

hamyam

Thanks, I did let itunes reformat & repair the corrupt drive but when it asks me to unplug the USB lead and plug a mains charger in there’s a bar at the bottom of the ipod screen that goes black then the ipod turns itself off, when I turn it on and go to the about menu its saying I have 2.3gb capacity but only 2.3gb available. Its saying I have no songs on it. I have been in the diagnostics menu and it looks ok as far as I can tell but im no expert

Markus

I've had this with my iPod, funnily enough it too was having a hard drive issue. Essentially the database on the iPod that holds the list of all the songs becomes corrupted, so the iPod has no way to know how many songs are on it. It does know the capacity of the disk and the free space as that's an easy thing for it to find out independant of this database.

Alas there isn't, well, not in iTunes, any way to rebuild the database once it's corrupted, and iTunes uses this database to work out what is on the iPod too.

So, what next? Well, Give ehpod a try, you can download it from here. Having a quick look at the docs on it I found this. There are to commands on there that might help out.
I'd first try the "Verify iPod Database" command to see what it turns up. I'd then be tempted to try the "Probe iPod for Lost Music" command, see how that goes, then finally I'd give the "Rebuild DB from iPod" command a go to see if it will rebuild the database.

Before rebuilding you may also wish to download the trial version of Anapod Explorer here. This also has options to rebuild the database. Have a look at the Mainrenance Utilities section on this page.

Worst case scenario here is that the drive is corrupt and unrepairable, which does happen, as said, it happened to me. If you replaced the battery yourself then you know how to open up the iPod, and if you can do that, you can replace the hard drive as it's nearly as simple as replacing the battery.
One thing to bear in mind if you go this route is to see if you can fit a larger capacity drive. I have a 40GB 4th Gen iPod and when the drive died I was able to replace the drive with a 60GB unit from the 5th Gen Video iPods as they were the same size and make. So depending on your iPod model you may be able to do the same.

hamyam

Well I borrowed another ipod and swapped hard drives and all worked fine, this morning when I returned from work I thought ill see if I could reformat the old hard drive through windows and put it back in. When I turned it on it said I had all the 18.5gb available but itunes and ephpod are still saying they cant rebuild the data base .I have tried it in and out of disk mode. Is there a way of formatting it through windows or am I fighting a lost course? In itunes its coming up with a unknown error 1418?

Markus

If you can see it as a regular disk via windows, and it sounds as though you can, simply format it FAT32. Then try a restore with iTunes and see if it'll then play ball. Formatting it will, obviously, lose you any music that is on the device, but you may well have a working iPod after doing this.

hamyam

Yes it shows up as a removable drive in my computer but if I right click it ,it freezes .I was wondering if I might be able to format it with something like the old dos?

Markus

Try this:
Start menu -> Run

Enter the following into the dialog that appears and press return:

compmgmt.msc

This should launch computer managment console. In there you should find a Storage section and in there is a Disk Managment item, pop into there, see if the iPod disk is listed, if so, right click on it and there should be a format option, give that a shot and see if it will format it.

hamyam

Thanks markus for your help did as you said and worked a treat. If i have a hard drive and when i turn the ipod on it makes a clicking sound is there anyway of fixing it ,just ive been given it.

Markus

Mine started clicking and that, along with iTunes being funny about copying things to it (would freeze sometimes) gave me the impression it wasn't happy. Dropping to the command line and trying to copy files from the iPod resulted in an I/O error and that point I decided the drive was corrupted beyond repair and needed replacing. Unfortunately it sounds as though the drive in your iPod is beyond repair

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Yep that clickin is the HDD failing on read.