ipod corrupted - Error -53 when attempting to sync 160gb ipod classic

Every time I attach my ipod to my PC (Vista) I get a windows message that the drive is corrupted. I also get to various points of the syncing process in itunes and it fails to complete as I get an itunes error message number -53. I seem to have tried everything - re-formatting drive, restoring ipod, resetting ipod, deleting files that were being synced at the time of the syncing failure, but I can't seem to solve this problem and cannot find any info on error -53 anywhere on itunes support or even when searching on the web.

Can anyone help please??

Thanks.