*Skipping songs*
The iPod seems to fail to play all of the occasional track that iTunes, and indeed other PMPs, are happy to play. There is probably some minor technical error in the internal structure of the file which is normally ignored by other playback software but causes the Classic to bail out.
You may like to try scanning the files with
MP3 Validator which can find & fix some internal MP3 errors.
Some users have also suggested that completely removing all id3 tags and then replacing the information can be a solution. This can be achieved in iTunes by selecting an affected track, right/option clicking and using the option Convert id3 tags > None. Since some files may mistakenly have more than one tag you may need to repeat this action. Once you have confirmed that no tag is present you can replace the tag information using Convert id3 tags > V2.3 (I believe it is recommended to avoid using V2.4).
Personally I have found files for which these solutions don't work. In this case the workaround is either to re-rip the tracks or get iTunes to re-encode the file, e.g. convert AAC to MP3 or vice versa and sync the newly encoded file to the iPod instead. Because transcoding will cause a loss of fidelity you should keep your original file so that if a future iPod firmware resolves this issue you can put your original files back onto the iPod.
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The above relates to songs which have always been a problem. If songs have played fine on the iPod before but don't any longer (and they haven't been updated) then one possible cause is some form of hard drive corruption.
*Check your iPod with Diagnostics Mode*
It's possible that your iPod's hard drive has started to fail. Take your iPod and place your right thumb on the centre
SELECT button and your left on the top
MENU button. Press down both thumbs for about 6 seconds until your iPod reboots. Immediately move your left thumb around to the rewind button
|<< on the left and hold this down together with
SELECT for a further 6 seconds. Your iPod should now switch into Diagnostic Boot mode. Press
MENU for *Manual Test*, then select *IO > HardDrive > HDSMARTData* to reveal your stats. For comparison here are mine for my 2 year old 6th Generation Classic:
Retracts: 889
Reallocs: 12
Pending Sectors: 0
PowerOn Hours: 2202
Start/Stops: 894
Temp: Current 24c
Temp: Min 10c
Temp: Max 50c
Take a note of your results. When finished press *SELECT & MENU* for 6 seconds to reset the iPod again.
With modern disc drives sectors are no longer marked bad by a disc scan, if the SMART firmware detects a sector it has trouble accessing it will attempt to invisibly reallocate it to a spare area of the disc.
Note that I've only 12 remapped sectors and none pending. To help explain what the numbers mean here is an extract from the Wikipedia
S.M.A.R.T. article:
*Reallocated Sectors Count*
Count of reallocated sectors. When the hard drive finds a read/write/verification error, it marks this sector as "reallocated" and transfers data to a special reserved area (spare area). This process is also known as remapping, and "reallocated" sectors are called remaps. This is why, on modern hard disks, "bad blocks" cannot be found while testing the surface – all bad blocks are hidden in reallocated sectors. However, as the number of reallocated sectors increases, the read/write speed tends to decrease. The raw value normally represents a count of the number of bad sectors that have been found and remapped. Thus, the higher the attribute value, the more sectors the drive has had to reallocate.
*Pending sector count*
Number of "unstable" sectors (waiting to be remapped, because of read errors). If an unstable sector is subsequently written or read successfully, this value is decreased and the sector is not remapped. Read errors on a sector will not remap the sector (since it might be readable later); instead, the drive firmware remembers that the sector needs to be remapped, and remaps it the next time it's written.
Large numbers of Reallocs or Pending Sectors would suggest your drive is failing and that you may need to repair or replace your iPod. Check your stats after another attempt to update your iPod. If the numbers increase that again points to hard drive failure. While it won't be good news at least you'll know it isn't some random software problem and you can decide what to do next.
tt2
