Q: After iTunes 9 upgrade iPod Classic is corrupt without ability to restore

Did you end up sending that article off to the Star, etc? Have you heard back yet?

And has anyone here tried what I outlined in my steps above? I have an update: my ipod was having a few difficulties after I unplugged it (i.e. showing only a few gigs of space left when there was no music on it yet), but since then, after a few more pluggings in and out with itunes 8, everything seems to be functioning (although a bit slower than usual). My advice is to follow my protocol exactly and see what happens. Post the results here if you can. Don't give up on your ipods yet. That being said, I still think Apple needs to compensate us for this ********.

You asked if anyone had recently bought a POD and was using it with iTunes 9. About 2 months ago, I bought a 5th generation Nano (dwarf in English?). It has been happily communicating with iTunes (unless there is something I'm not noticing) and it's a nice little machine.

Thank God that I saw this message on twitter (http://twitter.com/linux4nano):

We would advise NOT to upgrade to iTunes 9 when it's released until more is known about it (or any apple upgrade) We'll keep you updated
7:37 PM Sep 5th, 2009 via web

linux4nano is a group that tries to decrypt the firmware on iPod classic (and other earlier models too), so you can load other programs than Apple's onto the device.

So I'm holding on to iTunes 8.2.0.23 and happy with that!

Message was edited by: GamePat

Afraid I wouldn't be optimistic at all about the prospects for your iPod - I've been through the phases described many times here of my iPod failing to sync with iTunes 9, demanding to be restored, not being recognised, formatting seeming to sort out the problem, only for the same thing to happen all over again once a certain amount of space (around 20Gb for me, initially) was reached. In the end it was conking out more and more often, and since I had been spending so much time trying different things out, in the end I decided enough was enough and bought a Cowon. So far so good with that, and the sound is far better.

My iPod was 2 months out of warranty when the problems started, then limped on for another 3 or so months afterwards. From the diagnostics tests I've run (see other threads for details of how to do this), it looks as if the iPod may have been overheating and that the hard drive is damaged - given how many other people have had identifical symptoms since iTunes 9 came along, my guess is that some faulty code has confused the iPods and caused permanent hard drive damage, and that Apple have decided to keep schtum and just accept the loss of the few thousand customers who've noticed that they're not alone, rather than a potentially costly and more public compensation or product recall. After all, who can prove anything?

For anyone else interested in ekeing a few more months out of their terminally ill iPods, then here are the main things which helped me and the things which didn't:

No help:
- Calling Apple Tech Support - out of warranty, so not their problem anymore - they claimed to have heard nothing about the problem, and the reference to hundreds (are we at a thousand yet?) of posts on the Apple forums didn't cut it.

- Emailing Apple Tech Support (once got sent a link to iTunes 8.x and so hoped I might get further suggestions or at least acknowledgement when I replied to say it hadn't helped - but not a chance)

- Any of the fixes suggested on these forums (though thanks for the suggestions - they were all worth a try...)

Some help:

- Formatting iPod when it wasn't being recognised by iTunes - sometimes I could format it on a different computer if mine wouldn't recognise it

- Spreading the word, warning existing iPod users to stay clear of iTunes 9, and others to steer a mile clear of Apple

- Looking at other brands - helped to remind me not to waste time indefinitely trying to fix it

Good luck to others - Apple's had quite enough of my money for one lifetime...

Thanks a lot for your post, cr0999. Well-said and straightforward. And now the countdown begins to see when this piece of $hit will fail again. It's weird how I've grown so attached to this iPod, these last 2 years and 2 or so months. I feel a twinge of sadness calling it a piece of $hit. F*ck Apple.

So this question has been answered??? Helpful answers 2 and solved answers 1??? I've sifted through 37 pages, tried every suggestion and my result is still unsolved. Can someone please point out the solution?

According to macrumors iTunes 9.1 is coming. I hope this version will bring a solution for the many iPod classic owners...

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/29/itunes-9-1-to-bring-ebook-support-genius-mix -enhancements-automatic-bitrate-conversion/

Does this solve the problem? I still want to buy an iPod Classic, but I don't want to have the risk that it doesn't work anymore. I have Windows 7, I don't know if that is important.

I am not keen on trying it. I'll wait for an official Apple comment on this matter. Maybe it will never come but at the moment I am too afraid for corrupting a good working iPod Classic.

Didn't fix it for me, my issue is synchronizing files.

I ran HDD Low-Level Format which came back with a number of bad sectors. I'm in the process of researching how to deallocate those sectors so that they are completely ignored, but have not found anything yet. If anyone can post me a link on how to do that, I will test and see if it fixes my iPod and then report back to here.

I loaded iTunes 9.1 this morning, and tried to sync my iPod Classic 120 that does not work anymore since weeks.

After a few attempts, a few messages saying "iPod is busy and can't be sync" and "iPod corrupted please restore", well, I finally was able to sync it with my entire song library, and it did not crash ! Woooo !

The first tests with iPod are OK, hope it will stay OK. but I do not dare syncing it again !!

No luck for me with the new i tunes
This really is outrageous.. Apple, you have let many customers down here...

OK mine was corrupted.I went to the Istore and the cleared it out and went to restore it ,but said the HD was corrupt.First off ,how does this happen when?I have no hack software.Everything is either downloaded off iTunes or CD.I'm not the mostcomputer gifted person so I don't mess with the settings or programs.Luckily I was still in warranty and they gave me a new one,but sort of worried about pugging the new one in to my computer,with all this talk of 9.0 causing all the problems.Of course I just downloaded 9.1 and should I keep it or try to figure out how to get 8.0 back on my computer?

Just wanted to add myself to the victims list. I think it's ridiculous that Apple would suggest that owners of previously working devices purchase new devices as a solution to the problem caused by the Itunes update. No way in ****! I would be more than happy to forego future Apple purchases. However, what I would like to know is if the Itunes music can be synced only to Ipods, or can I use another MP3 player and somehow transfer my Itunes music to it? Getting away from Ipods are going to cause alot of effort, as well as money, as I have various car cradles and such that would need to be replaced in order to accommodate a different player, but I am more than willing if I can save my music, and the thousands of dollars I've spent with Apple acquiring it.

One strategy for using other devices might be researching the programs available for converting Apple music formats to others.
I have two MACS (recently abandoned WIN) and, on one of them, have a program from Sonic, which is for CDs and DVDs and does all the converting you could possibly want.
But a search engine like Google, Bing, etc., will flush out lots of that type of program.
My MACs have made peace with a (new) iPOD, so I am happy as I am.