I've Now Killed 2 160GB iPod Classics with My Music Library

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Level 1

8 points

I've Now Killed 2 160GB iPod Classics with My Music Library

I've now tried to load my complete iTunes library onto an iPod classic twice, and both times, once the complete library is loaded, the Apple boot screen appears and the hard drive spins until the battery goes dead.

Today, I took the first one into the Apple Store, and the guy working at the Genius Bar had no idea what had happened. Using his diagnostic tools, he attempted to get beyond the boot screen, but he was unable to break the the infinite loop. He figured it was a bad iPod, and gave me a new one on the spot.

I brought the new one home, and I hooked it up to my computer. Setup and registration went fine. So I tried transferring just my purchased music, ejecting, and checking the iPod. That worked fine. So I added my videos (7GB). Again, no problem. Then I added the podcasts. Check.

So I went back to the Music tab, and had it sync all my songs and playlists. It took almost 5 hours, and everything appeared to be working fine. But when I went to eject the iPod, the Eject screen would not disappear. After 45 minutes, out of frustration, I removed the USB cable from the iPod. After another 15 minutes of the Eject screen, I tried to reset the iPod. And when I did, I got the Apple boot screen.

After almost 3 hours of the hard drive spinning, the Apple screen is still there. And it will be there until the battery dies. And if I charge the battery, the hard drive will keep spinning until it kills that charge. Two attempts to sync my complete music library, two bricked iPod Classics.

Any clues as to why my music library is killing iPods? Has anybody else with a 100+GB collection had luck syncing the library using a Windows box? Can anybody help me??

I really want to enjoy my complete library and all the new functionality, but if this happens again, I'm going to eat the restocking fee and just wait until either Apple figures out what's going on and fixes it on the iPod or tells me how to fix my iTunes library (or my computer) so this stops happening.

Dell Dimension E510, Windows XP, 5G 80GB iPod, 3G 40GB iPod

Posted on Sep 11, 2007 7:19 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 11, 2007 8:07 PM in response to SJLinNYC

As bad as it sounds you might want to do what you did the second time but sync maybe half your music and eject and then sync the other half and eject. It seems that maybe it running to long might have done something. I had the same problem sort of and this worked.

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Answer 2

Sep 11, 2007 10:40 PM in response to SJLinNYC

I have had the same issues with 2 of my 160gb ipod's - can't transfer my itunes library of around 26,000 songs 135gb. The iPods crash, they are slow - some times they load but i can't play any files. I have exchanded one. Constantly having to hard reset and have done several reformats. These iPods are extremely buggy either hardware or software - very disappointing and a lousy experience the worst i have had with any apple product to date

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Answer 3

Scott Rose

Level 4

1,058 points

Sep 11, 2007 10:43 PM in response to SJLinNYC

I don't think it's your music library's fault -- there seems to be some sort of a widespread problem with these 160 GB iPod classics. You can see my thread here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1127750&tstart=0

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Answer 4

Scott Rose

Level 4

1,058 points

Sep 11, 2007 11:03 PM in response to Scott Rose

Thanks to Justin who posted the YouTube video on this (see my other thread), it seems like this software bug is related to album artwork... if you turn off the option to sync album artwork with your iPod & then resync your iPod, your iPod should work again. So you won't have any album artwork until Apple comes up with a fix for this...

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Answer 5

hmgreen

Level 1

0 points

Sep 12, 2007 8:54 AM in response to SJLinNYC

I just upgraded to an iPod Classic 160. I have experienced 2 problems, but not with album art.

First, iTunes is very slow. It seems to freeze for minutes at a time when performing any operations on it.

Secondly, I have a lot of Podcasts - both video and audio.

I can download them with no problem. I can see them in the contents pane in iTunes for my computer. I can play them in iTunes and I can sync them with my new iPod (apparently).

However, they do NOT show up on my iPod. The new contents screen shows No Podcasts. When I do a search for them they show up as songs and I can heard the video podcast soundtracks.

In iTunes with my iPod connected they show up under both the iTunes directory and in the iPod Directory immediately after syncing. However, if I eject and then reconnect the iPod, upon reconnection they no longer show up in iTunes in the iPod directory.

I am assuming this is a bug with either iTunes 7.4.x in the way it categorizes Podcasts or it is an OS issue with the iPod. I have the latest versions of iTunes, the latest SW and Firmware updates for the iPod and have rebooted to assure that the latest versions are the ones running.

Anyone else experience these? Anyone find solutions?

Thanks.

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Answer 6

peeble

Level 4

2,095 points

Sep 13, 2007 12:22 PM in response to SJLinNYC

not that this helps (resolves) with your issue but I got a black 160gb and plugged it into a windows xp box and it synched 102.5GB of music straight off with no problems, although it did take about 4-54 hours to synch. It seems to be working fine since as well(a bit slow at times on the cover art)

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Answer 7

Sep 13, 2007 1:14 PM in response to SJLinNYC

I just got my IPOD 160GB (black) last Tuesday. Already getting some issue with loading/opening it on iTune after putting the content of one of my IPod 60GB into this classic and then ejecting it and then reconnecting it (via IPod USB cable) back to my computer. I'm planning to load the content of my two (older) IPod 60GB (video) into this one. But I'm getting stock on the iTune load time after transferring/synching a similar content in first IPod 60GB Video into this IPOD 160GB Classic.

Error message I'm getting... And this is after doing a IPOD "RESTORE" (ouch!!!) and then reloading/resynching My iTune Library again.
"iTune has detected an IPod that appears to be corrupted. You may need to restore this iPod before it can be used with iTunes. You may also try disconnecting and reconnecting the iPod"

I'll try disabling the artwork and see if that'll work for me.

And the content in my IPOD 60GB isn't that much either. Why would IPOD an 60GB be able to handle the load and not the IPOD 160GB?
1. Audio (Music + Audiobooks) is around 6000 plus files or around 35GB size
2. Movie is 8 files
3. Photos is 2000 plus files
4. Backup files via Windows Explorer 16GB size

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Answer 8

Sep 13, 2007 1:53 PM in response to SJLinNYC

i was having similar issues (although not as bad) with my library of ~115GB, 25000 songs. After a restore it's been fine 😀 it sounds like you haven't done a restore yet. To do it, restart the iPod (hold menu and the centre button) and as soon as the screen goes blank hold play and the centre button. This puts the iPod in disc mode, which will allow you to connect to the computer. Wipe the hard drive, connect to itunes, and don't sync, restore instead.

Before restoring, I tried putting my music on in fragments, by using a smart playlist (of all songs over 0MB) choosing the first xGB by album, so that i could slowly increase 'x' and put more music on... i found that it was stable up until about 100-105 gb of music (this was with a few vids and 5000 pics)

Just a couple of things for you to try 🙂 (putting the iPod in disc mode will allow you to sync again, but you have to restart it to get it out... which confronts you with the iritating apple screen ;))

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Answer 9

Sep 15, 2007 6:42 PM in response to SJLinNYC

I too have killed two 160gb iPod Classics now by attempting to sync my library. I am using a 20" iMac Intel Core Duo machine and neither of the two iPods even made it through the initial 82gb sync before locking up and showing me the illuminated Apple boot screen until battery death.

Suppose I will return useless iPod Classic number two tomorrow, I don't need any more paper weights.

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Answer 10

Sep 15, 2007 9:32 PM in response to SJLinNYC

i've returned one for the same reason.

on #2 right now, let's hope it behaves

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Answer 11

Sep 16, 2007 4:41 PM in response to Mister Beefy

I returned to the Apple Store today with frozen iPod number two. After many futile attempts to unlock the iPod the Genius Bar staff finally waved the white flag. I accepted a store credit for the full amount and went on my way with no new iPod.

If enough people experience this Apple will be forced to address and once a fix is made I will again attempt to purchase the 160GB iPod Classic. Until then I will go back to old faithful, my 60GB iPod Video. She will not hold my entire library but she works without any flaws!

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