iPod classic 160gb. Apple.com/support/ipod. No use anymore. How to force restart?

the clicking you are describing is the sound of a dead hard drive, it can be replaced but be advised opening that gen of ipods is a pain so I'd recommend taking it to a professional, as another commenter said you can see the hard drive status by holding select (center button) + menu, and following the screen turning off quickly press and hold select + previous (left button), in the diagnostics menu that will apear navigate (using the previous, next, and select buttons) to I/O > Hard Drive > SMART Data, a series of statistics should appear, if they don't then your hard drive has indeed kicked the bucket, if they do focus on the "reallocs" number, a higher reallocs number means the hard drive is closer to dying anything bellow 10 shouldn't be cause for concern, if you're REALLY sick of the clicking then you might wanna turn off the ipod, simply connect it to a power source (wall or PC/Mac, both will suffice), and then hold select + menu untill the screen turns off completely, last but not lead you might wanna try hitting it, it's barbaric, it probably won't work and might damage the ipod further, but if none of the above are aplicable for whatever reason then you might wanna do this as a last resort, firmly grip the ipod with the dock connector facing down, then bash it against a table until something happens, I'm not responsible for any damage or injuries resulting from that and I highly discourage you from even thinking about it. hope that helps!

I had to factory reset my iPod nano third generation so I think that you need to press the center button and the menu button at the same time for like 10 seconds (and then you have to connect to your computer, though you can also do this while connected to your computer)

I recommend you sell it, people are willing to pay a pretty penny for a broken ipod so they can fix it and give it new life, it's a win win

I had the same problem with a 5th-gen classic; I tried everything, but I had to flash mod it to get it to work. It might be time to replace the old, slow drive. The drives don't last long, either.

Did you try putting it into disk mode and then erasing it through disk utility. that worked for my 5th gen classic with the same issue.

See Corrupt iPod Classic - Apple Community. What are your HDD stats?

tt2