Corrupt iPod classic

Here are a number of things to try...

Recover media from a manually managed iPod

What follows are tips for restoring your iPod, but if it is the only location currently hosting some of your media then the first task is to try to extract it. See the user tip Recovering your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device for some recovery tools. Most third party tools will probably require the device to have a functioning library however the techniques outlined in the iLounge Article referenced at the end should work as long as the device still shows up in Windows Explorer or Finder.

Check your iPod with Diagnostics Mode

It is 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 taken when my 6th Generation Classic was about 2 years old:

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 MENU+SELECT 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.

Check iPod hard-drive for errors

Assuming the diagnostics give the drive a clean bill of health it may still be worth checking the drive for logical file system errors.

Hold MENU+SELECT on the iPod for about 6 seconds until it resets, then switch to PLAY+SELECT as soon as the Apple logo appears, again for about 6 seconds to put the machine in disk mode. Open iTunes and in the Devices tab of the preferences menu check Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically. Now connect your iPod to the computer, wait until it connects, then close iTunes.

Windows: Browse My Computer and right-click on the drive for the iPod, click Properties, then click Tools. Under Error-checking, click Check Now. Under Check disk options, select Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors (Optional - takes ages but a good idea if you've reason to suspect physical damage). Click Start.

Mac: Run Disk Utility / Repair Disk for the equivalent process.

This should find and correct any errors in the logical & physical structures of your iPod's hard drive. Once these have been fixed you can reset the iPod (hold MENU+SELECT) and should stand a better chance of a successful restore. It might also pay to check the status of the source drive containing your media, particularly if no errors were found on the iPod.

DFU Restore

If the device still won't restore normally try this method. Connect the device to the USB cable, press MENU+SELECT like a standard reset but keep holding for 12 seconds. The device should reboot as normal and then the screen should go blank. Now open iTunes and try to restore again.

Reformat Drive

If all else fails 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 are stopping iTunes from restoring it properly.

Break up large transfers

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.

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 or whatever playlist holds the bulk of the content you want on your device. Tick against Limit to, type in say 10, 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

Turingtest2, you are THE MAN! Your excellent post of step-by-step determination led to rapid resolution of my problem. In my case, after the disk checked out fine, 0 retracts and 0 reallocations, I went over to batch transfers of about 250 songs at a time. Problem solved. Thank you VERY MUCH!

That said, three observations:

• A post on another website taught me to create a playlist in iTunes on my desktop and copy all of my music to the playlist. This does not transfer any 'missing link' entries (as indicated in the ! column) to the playlist. I then transferred from that playlist to the main folder on my iPod in smaller batches, which worked without a flaw.
• This problem WAS a consequence of my updating to the latest version of iTunes. I say that with certainty now because I was able to transfer my entire iTunes folder to the same iPod in one step four separate times using several previous versions of iTunes without incident. First, when my iPod was new, once when I was moving all my Holiday music to my 8 GB Nano, and once after my C: drive crashed on the desktop and was replaced, and once recently when I moved my iTunes folder to a larger hard drive that was not the root drive. Four for Four. But update to the latest version of iTunes and under the new version the bulk transfer fails. (As The Fiend pointed out in this thread, the iPod software had not changed.)
• I have done enough C++ and JAVA programming to know a software problem when I hit one. This problem is a glitch, not a 'feature'. But your work-around worked splendidly.

these are my first stats these are my second

retracts 13

reallocs 13216 13392

pending sectors 3160 2984

power on hours 203 204

start stops 25552 25561

temp current 34c

temp min 3c

temp max 62c

what do you suggest?

my ipod was working fine until it got synced by mistake, and i lost all my music. When i tried syncing to my library it got up to 10000 songs and then it froze. this happened a bunch of times ,freezing at different points. i tried to only copy 50 songs at a time, but after 300 songs it started going slow again.

P.S. will apple replace my ipod? (im still within the first year of buying it)

Thanx alot

Hi, Thanks for the quick reply !!

Specs:

Retracts: 12

Reallocs: 17

Pending Sectors: 9

PowerOn Hours: 2161

Start/Stops: 187

Temp: Current 28c

Temp: Min 15c

Temp: Max 51c

I cannot format, it shows like a corrupt usb device....Cannot access it, nor properties etc...

Any help would be greatly appreciated because I'm completely out of ideas !!?? Thanks

The pending sectors can only be released if the file or folder they are part of is deleted, Since there is no way to get that information deleting all data is the only realistic approach. You should have copies of all media on the device in your library, and that should be backed up too.

tt2

How odd. This may be one of those occasions when using another computer for the format helps out. It is also possible that something isn't quite right with the iTunes install and Windows is using the wrong driver for the iPod. See Troubleshooting issues with iTunes for Windows updates for a guide to reinstalling iTunes.

tt2

👿

I forgot to mention Apple's own support topic for iPod Displays a Red "X" Icon. On the basis that it is probably beyond help you could also look up drive replacement instructions online. You could try opening up the case and reseating the connectors in a more conventional fashion, or investigate the option of replacing the drive.

tt2

I gave E: as an example. Is that the drive letter assigned to the iPod when connected? If not you need to use the correct letter in its place. In some cases you would need to put the device into disk mode before connecting it to the computer.

tt2

Yes, if the library file on the device gets corrupted then there is generally no other way to "see" the media on it. The first section of my Corrupt iPod classic post deals with extracting media from an iPod with a corrupt library. This would normally be into an iTunes library, but Windows Media Player or MediaMonkey could also potentially read the recovered files. It depends on how locked down the computer is and how much free space there is to play with.

tt2

Try temporarily disabling AVG for a set period, reboot and try again, just to eliminate that as possible cause. Otherwise take a look at Troubleshooting issues with iTunes for Windows updates. You can try reinstalling the current version. If that doesn't help try the for older video cards release.

tt2

_JASE_ wrote:

Thank you for all the information posted. I've followed everything...did the DFU restore etc but now my iPod just wont go past disk mode. I've tried resetting it, plugging it back into the pc, tried to reformat the drive, but I just can't get it out of disk mode now. When I plug it back into my pc and open iTunes nothing happens, it is in disk mode and says 'do not disconnect' - I left it like that for about 6 hours last night and it didn't progress... Is there any way to get it out of disk mode?

Press MENU+SELECT for 6 seconds to reset the iPod again.

What are the HDD stats? See Corrupt iPod Classic for steps to view them.

tt2

Here are my stats:

Retracts: 11Reallocs: 0Pending Sectors: 8PowerOn Hours: 2732Start/Stops: 36783Temp: Current 27cTemp: Min 1cTemp: Max 55c

Same problem, ipod classic 80gb from 2007 and I have never had problems with it until itunes was updated. I reinstalled an older version of itunes (10.3.1.55) but it still freezes whenever I plug in my ipod. The ipod itself still works when I use it but there's no way I can add music to it now because of the freezing.

Is there anything else I can do or will I need to reformat the whole thing?

Max. temp is a little high. The chances are that iTunes wants to read something in those pending sectors which is why it freezes. Restoring or reformatting the drive should free those up to be replaced with more reliable ones.

tt2

I have an ipod classic that is a few years old that keeps appearing as corrupted.

These were the stats I got:

Retracts 4

Reallocs 2848

Pending Sectors 0

Power on hours 123

starts/ stops: 11004

temp: current: 32 degrees c

min: 0 degrees c

max: 53 degrees c

When I did it a second time after trying to restore again the only thing that changed was starts and stops (to 11011)

Should I be replacing it or is it still fixable?

Thanks

Max. temp of 62 suggests you've let it get too hot at some point which may be the root of the problem, or it could be a symptom of the fact that the drive is having to work too hard to retrieve data. I can't answer for Apple, but it isn't likely to make a spontaneous recovery. I guess you could make an appointment with your local Genius Bar and see what they say.

tt2