Is my iPod fried?

I posted about a month ago--to no response--about the difficulty I was having getting my 4thGen iPod to reboot, reformat, re-anything. I did all the tricks as advised on the iPod site. Yesterday I even tried to do a zero-out erase of the drive but it locked up when it was supposedly trying to write the partition.

Anyway, why I ask the question in the subject line: I am hearing little clicking noises from Mr. iPod. I put it to my ear and hear "whirr...click...whirrrrrrrr....click click....whirrr...click" and so on. Sounds like there's a little person in there working on something. Actually kinda spooky when it's up against your ear like that. Evil clowns. Makes me think of evil clowns.

So if I were to hear this from one of my regular hard-drives I would think uh-oh, my HD's dying on me. However I am reluctant to make that diagnosis on a year-old iPod. Am I in denial? Nothing I do gets this thing to be fully recognized by my computer. Sometimes I get to the point where it tries to update the library but at some it point bogs-down and locks up.

So all in all I am am feeling a bit pessimistic about its prospects. Anyone with words of encouragement?

alan b

ps--BTW all drivers and apps are up-to-date