Weird question about iPod hard drive

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shane12341234

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I have a 4G 20GB iPod and the one year warranty has passed. I've been having problems with the hard drive in my iPod.

At random times the iPod would just freeze and when I restarted the iPod, sometimes it restarted just fine but there were other times when the sad face icon appeared. When this happened, there usually wasn't any sound coming from the hard drive, as if it was dead. This happened on and off for a couple months; sometimes it would go for a couple weeks without freezing. But eventually, it froze one day and nothing I could do would get it to start working again. I thought the hard drive was dead for sure...

I was about to send it to Apple to get it fixed but I realized it wasn't covered by the one-year warranty anymore and I did not want to pay the out-of-warranty price. So I decided to just open it up for some reason. Before opening it, I tried turning it on, and the sad face popped up. So then I opened it, lifted the hard drive up at one end, turned off the hold switch and it started making the normal spinning noise and the iPod started working again.

That lasted about a week and the freezing started happening again. But whenever the hard drive seems to die, I open the iPod, lift up the hard drive, turn it on and it starts working again...

I have no idea how that works but it has worked every single time.

Can anybody tell me why lifting up the hard drive fixes this problem? And is there possibly a way to permanently fix it so i don't have to open it up all the time?
 
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Perhaps the connectors to the harddrive are not aligned properly?
And is there possibly a way to permanently fix it so i don't have to open it up all the time?
Try sticking some gum underneath ? ;)
 
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hold menu and select and reset the entire application. my mini sometimes freezes up and i do that and its fine. also if its cold for a while...ie leave it in the car. IT will get a lil laggy in processes. But resetting DOES NOT delete songs if your worried about that. Call Apple and see what they say. they may or may not replace it if it is technical problems
 
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woah, i would like to know how to open up an ipod, im gonna look through this section a bit and maybe ill find something. but i was curious, what kind of harddrive do they use? and can you just put a new one in?
 
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just a note, its dangerous to open your ipod, you can puncture something or scratch your ipod, and i believe it voids your warranty.
 
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yeah its been over a year anyways. im not gonna do it now, ill wait till it fucl<s up. thanks for your concern though, got any tips for openin' it?
 
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Thin guitar picks
 
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shane12341234

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Aptmunich said:
Perhaps the connectors to the harddrive are not aligned properly?
Yeah that's a possibility I guess.
maz94protege said:
hold menu and select and reset the entire application.
But resetting DOES NOT delete songs if your worried about that.
I have said in my first post that I have tried to reset it many times.
RiseAbove24 said:
woah, i would like to know how to open up an ipod, im gonna look through this section a bit and maybe ill find something. but i was curious, what kind of harddrive do they use? and can you just put a new one in?
I wouldn't suggest opening it, I only opened mine because the warranty was finished and I didn't want to send it to Apple and pay the full price to get it fixed.

I'm not exactly sure what kind of hard drive they use but you can get replacement kits and put a new one in yourself.

And if anybody really wants to know...I used a guitar pick to open it. I put it in the crack at the top, slid down the left side and after that it was easy to pull the two parts apart. But just incase you do open it, be really careful when pulling the two parts away from each other cause there is a small cable thing connected from the front to the back.

That's for a 4G iPod...
 
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ok. nice, thanks, yeah my warranty is already up anways i think, its only a year right? cos i didnt get it extended, i was mostly just curious and may wanna open it in the future.
 
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If you look into Macaddict or MacWorld Magazine, you can find places that do overnight shipping and repair on ipods. basically get a new ipod in your old case for $99 and up. if i had a big problem with mine after the warranty went up id deffintaly do it.
 

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