iPod Classic sync troubles - ERASES iPOD!

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Hey, all...here's the sitch...

I have a 160-gig iPod Classic, had it for a couple of years...I use my MacBook 3,1 (Santa Rosa) to sync; the MacBook has 4 gigs of RAM, about 250 gigs of hard drive space out of 500 free (with my iTunes partition using only about 60 gigs of the 147 I set aside), running the latest iTunes and OS X 10.6.7. Firmware on both MacBook and iPod is up to date.

I went to sync my podcasts (I sync everything manually) today, and part-way through the sync, iTunes told me that the iPod was improperly ejected during the transfer. Weird, because it was plugged in and everything. The iPod said "Connected," and the iPod icon was still on my desktop.

But the iPod was frozen...it wouldn't do anything except that the lock icon would toggle as I slid the lock back and forth. I reset the iPod using the Menu and center button combo. Only problem was that the podcasts didn't transfer over; all my other stuff -- music, apps, photos, and older podcasts -- were still there.

I reconnected and reopened iTunes but got the beach ball, and the beach ball wouldn't go away, so I did a "force quit" on iTunes and rebooted. iTunes now decided to sync my podcasts, but when it got to the last one it hung for a long time, and I noticed that my iPod's message went from "Syncing" (man, I hate that misspelling of "synching" that has become commonplace!) to "Connected." Beach ball again...but now my iPod was 100% EMPTY!!! And when I reconnected the iPod, iTunes made me do a factory restore of the iPod, so I did.

But still, had problems syncing my podcasts...early in the sync, suddenly the iPod screen went from "Syncing" to "Connected," but the sync progress bar moved as if everything were normal, and again I'm left with an empty iPod. Repeat the attempt several times, including switching to another USB port, switching iPod cables (my wife and I each have owned two iPods over the years and we both have iPhones, so we have a ton of those transfer cables), reformatting the iPod again, etc. Sometimes the sync attempt would again give me a message warning that the iPod was disconnected without being ejected despite the fact that the iPod screen said "Connected" and the icon was still on my desktop....

I tried yet another factory restore, and again, the iPod after a few seconds no longer sez it's synching, but iTunes says it's not. It hangs after the last podcast, and now it's telling me "Attempting to copy to the disk 'Kingsford' failed. The disk could not be read from or written to." (I named the iPod Kingsford.) Another error window says, "The iPod 'Kingsford' cannot by sync[h]ed. The required disk cannot be found." (iPod actually says "Connected.")

Disk Utility reports no problems. I tried erasing via Disk Utility and restoring via iTunes; same problems.

What should I do???
 

chscag

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It sounds very much like the hard drive in the classic is acting up. All the symptoms you described point to that. Disk Utility works well to verify and repair normal hard drives but it's not very good at finding problems with flash drives and the smaller hard drives used in iPods. I went through the same thing with an older mini and wound up having to change out the hard drive.

Do you have Apple care on the Classic? If you don't, you might want to change out the drive yourself. Instructions for doing so are on the ifixit web site. iFixit: The free repair manual

Make sure you have a backup of all your music, movies, podcasts, and whatever.
 
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dauber
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Yeah, I keep everything. (All my music is from CDs, so I ALWAYS have a backup!)

And just to follow up....the iPod will not stay ejected if I eject it...after about 10 seconds, it starts up again.

I don't have AppleCare, but I do think I have Best Buy's warranty...I have an iPhone so I can use that to listen to my podcasts for now...
 
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dauber
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Another update....I just copied about 2 gigabytes worth of files over to my iPod (I have it set on the option to use as a hard disk) and they copied with ZERO problems. Looks like the trouble is with iTunes specifically...but I'm still wondering about the sitch where it won't stay ejected...
 
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Update:

Since I bought the service plan at Best Buy, I took my iPod over to Best Buy. Due to some technical difficulties they weren't able to send it out for whatever reason, so they just gave me a brand new one. :)

Problem more than solved. 8)
 

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