Diagnostic Mode, My iPod Classic doesn't have a FW Jack

Your computer might not have a FireWire port and even if it does, it's no use unless you have a FireWire iPod cable. Skip the test or reset your iPod and do manual tests, which in any case will be more informative.

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 is a sample of mine from 6th Generation Classic after I'd had it for about 2 years.

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

Don't worry. Different models have different options. Quitting a scan wouldn't cause a problem anyway. As the drive degrades it becomes less able to read and write sectors reliably. Reallocated sectors happen when a problem sector has been detected and is then taken out of use, but if the problem is too severe then there is not much to be done. The only other possibility would be to erase the contents again and then throw in a few large dummy files, e.g. 3Gb worth, in case the problem is all around that 2.4Gb region. Adding data to the iPod involves adding a file, and updating the database, over and over again. If the database becomes located in a sticky part of the drive then everything grinds to a halt.

tt2

Assuming all your media is in your library, hopefully backed up also, then you could put the device into disk mode, format its hard drive and restore. Don't put any media on it to start with, but confirm that the pending sectors have cleared into reallocated sectors. Then try putting your media back on and see what happens to the stats at the end of the process. If you are lucky you have a limited section of the drive that won't read reliably but the device is still usable once those bad sectors have been mapped out. If the stats gets worse that would suggest more serious damage to the drive, which is unlikely to get better, so you'll have to decide what to do next.

tt2

Try Erase your iPod - The Super Fix for most iPod Problems. Basically a low level format of the iPod’s hard drive to get around whatever problems might be stopping iTunes from fully restoring it.

Once you've restored your iPod don't rush to dump all the data back exactly as it was before. I have found that lots of large or complex smart playlists can sometimes trigger constant reboots or dumping of the iPod's library. In addition, larger transfers can fail leaving data in an inconsistent state. Try this technique for populating the iPod in stages.

Break up large transfers

In iTunes select the menu item File... New Smart Playlist. Change the first drop-down box to Playlist, the next to is and the next to Music. Tick against Limit to, type in say10, then change the drop-down to GB, and set the last drop-down to artist. When you click OK you can enter a name for the playlist, e.g. Transfer. Now sync this playlist to your iPod rather than your entire library. When the sync is complete modify the rule (File... Edit playlist) to increase the size by your chosen amount, then sync and repeat. You can experiment with different size increments, if it doesn't work just choose something a bit smaller until it works each time. Before long you should have all your music on your iPod. Once that's done you can move on to other media such as podcasts, videos, photos, playlists etc.

tt2

FYI.

I had problems with my 160GB drive. Briefly, if you restored it, it worked up to a point. You could get a couple of gig of songs on it and all would be fine. But if you kept going you'd hear some whirring and chirping and everything would lock-up.

My computer is running XP SP3.

I could still put the iPod into disk mode. If I opened a command prompt window and ran chkdsk it would show multiple file errors. If I ran chkdsk /R the errors would be fixed.

But then if you restored it and started putting music on it, it would lock-up again.

So I decided it would be best to reform the drive. To do that I had to discover the utility Fat32Formatter. But when I tried it, it stated that the partition had collapsed and that the drive needed to be initialized. I tried to use the initialize feature of Fat32Formatter, but still got the message that the partition had collapsed.

I then discovered EASEUS Partition Master, which I can strongly recommend.

I'm happy to say that I repartitioned the drive this weekend. So far (knock on wood) it's working fine.

I pretty much used the Partition Master default values. It allowed me to select 100 GB of the drive (the surface test starting failing just a bit beyond that point), specify the partition as primary and FAT32 reformat it.

I used the default cluster size, I believe it was 64K. I left the partiton label blank (it was optional). I picked the Drive letter as N. When I was done, the iPod name was N:\, but it was easy to change.

If you believe you need to reformat and nothing else is working for you, give Partition Master a try.

Ron

If it can help someone I couldn't manage to sync my ipod completely (it stopped in the middle because of bad sectors I think) and I couldn't reformat my ipod classic 80GB to FAT32 in Windows. Finally I used a live cd of GParted (Parted Magic) and I formatted the disk there. I had to try the formatting but in the end it worked.

After that I shut my computer down, unplugged my ipod, then rebooted to Windows.

Then I plugged my ipod in again, launched itunes, sync...and tada! The sync worked until the end.

Good luck to all that read this, hope that helps!

It looks like your hd is about to fail. 😟

If you feel up to it you can buy one of those ZIF to compact flash adaptors for a few bucks and connect a compact flash card to it. I've done this for an earlier model (with ATA/IDE) and it works great. Of course, you need to open your ipod for this.

Try the DFU restore method shown in Corrupt iPod classic to see if you can get the pending sectors cleared out. Unless there are damaged areas of the disc that have yet to be discovered that should enable you to get some more use out of it. Probably wouldn't hurt to start planning for its replacement.

tt2

Have you tried a different cable, a different computer, or checked the dock port for fluff? It needs a restore to clear those pending sectors. Any time the iPod tries to read data from those it will stutter.

tt2

A reset should get you out of disk mode. You could try a DFU restore. Like a normal one, but connect to the USB lead then press menu & select for 12 seconds. The device should reset and then the screen should go blank. I suspect the drive has some serious issues but I guess it is worth a try.

tt2

That's a fair number of reallocs, but if none are pending then you may well still have some further use out of the device. If it isn't working now try the DFU restore method shown in Corrupt iPod classic, load it up with songs and see how you get on. If it works, great! If it freezes up and the stats get worse then it is probably time to retire it. FYI anything over 50c has the potential to permanently damage the drive. If you don't fancy buying a replacement device you could investigate having the hard drive replaced instead, or even do it yourself.

tt2

Try the DFU restore method in Corrupt iPod classic.

tt2

I had similar problem with iPod classic,it was working fine for 2 and hlaf years,and oneday when I connected it to itunes,it hung up,even my computer was not responding.On removing all content is gone,I had half the capacity full of songs,noe it says almost all of memory is used up by "other" content.I also could feel the disc spinning.Tried connecting different computer,both mac and windows,no use,my ipod is not recognised.Finally ,I was about to say RIP,just did some more googling,and found out a method for entering DISK MODE.Once in disk mode ,itunes recognised ipod and insisted for restore.I did restore,and the ipod is working fine(sure ,I lost data)

Then the chances are that the drive has had it. They don't last forever. Probably time to think about a replacement, though you might want to consider whether you want to replace it with another hard drive model or something like an iPod touch that has solid state memory.

tt2

The freezing happens when the iPod needs to take say 10 or 20 goes to read the sector holding the data. At some point it will mark the sector as "pending" because it is hard to read, and eventually it will just give up and the iPod will skip to the next track or sometimes lock up completely.

If your computer has a tendency to freeze it could be from a similar cause. If you don't have a backup of your iTunes library and other important data then see to that pronto.

Every time Windows starts writing data out to a disk it sets a flag to say it is busy, then when the write process completes it clears the flag. If something goes wrong then next time the drive is connected Windows "knows" there might be inconsistent data which is why it flgas it up for checking. You should let it do so.

tt2