How long should HDD diagnostic take / How do I prove to Apple HDD is dead?

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Level 1

45 points

How long should HDD diagnostic take / How do I prove to Apple HDD is dead?

Yesterday I pulled out my iPod, connected it to my Macintosh, and waited. And waited. And it never appeared in iTunes or Finder. I fiddled a bit, but no matter what I did I couldn't get it to mount. As I was doing this I noticed that the iPod was going "tick, tick, tick, tick..." over and over, with a regular beat. This was not the usual hard drive sound, nor the click of the scroll wheel.

I reset it a few times to no avail. The third time, the "sad iPod" icon came up. All subsequent resets resulted in the sad iPod icon.

After reading around online here for a bit, I decided to try the restore. I got--with much playing--the thing into disk mode, and then ran the restore. An hour later the restore hadn't started, so I aborted. (Meanwhile, tick, tick, tick, tick...)

I let it sit overnight. When I got up this AM and woke up the computer, the iPod mounted!

I then did the restore and reloaded my music without trouble. Then, for the heck of it, I ran the HDD diagnostic that's built into the iPod.

I started that over an hour ago. The screen says "HDD SCAN / START . . . ." and nothing else.

1) How long should an HDD scan take?
2) Since the iPod is, essentially working, how do I prove to Apple that the HDD is failing? (I know it is failing, I work with computers. Tick, tick, tick = stuck heads or something worse.)

I have Apple Care, but if I just walk into the store they're going to say "it works" and hand it back.

Thoughts?

PowerBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.1)

Posted on Apr 17, 2006 2:59 PM

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Answer 1

Mitch 751

Level 6

11,644 points

Apr 18, 2006 6:08 AM in response to mjruss

For Diagnostic mode please read the following
http://www.methodshop.com/mp3/ipodsupport/diagnosticmode/

The sound means you have HD's problem with your iPod. I do not suggest that you do the tapping at the moment, as it is still covered under the warranty.

I suggest that you should plug our iPod with your Mac, open the disk utility (hope you will see your iPod there-then highlight it), go to Tab "Partition" and click either "delete" or "partition", if does not work, go to next step, go to Tab "ERASE" and click Erase. Once it has been done, re do the Restore.

You may need to plug with a window base PC and do a Restore there, just in case your Mac can read your iPod.

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Answer 2

mjruss Author

Level 1

45 points

Apr 18, 2006 11:13 AM in response to Mitch 751

Well, the iPod is working right now, and I have managed to complete one restore thus far. I also stopped in at the Apple store and was told pretty much what I expected: "Yes, that doesn't sound good. No, we can't do anything for you, the iPod appears to be working right now."

They did run disk utility on it, and it came up green, no problems. They said that it was probably going to die sooner rather than later, so I can just hope that it happens before the Apple Care runs out.

So for now I guess I just keep using it! I can't think of any more tests to run, so I'll just wait for it to die now.

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