I have a 160GB iPod Classic that recently stopped synching with iTunes v 12.8. I get the "pinwheel" for about an hour before a message will say that it has to be restored. I do that, tried reloading the iPod with my library and right at the end it decides to dump the music. I've done all the tests and everything apprears to be working on the device. I'm not sure what to do. Help!
iPod classic, 160GB
This the data before the DFU
This is HD stats after the DFU restore and it's working decent. The pending sectors # dropped considerably. So you think doing another DFU restore will continue to reduce the sectors? Thanks!
I've been updating an iPod classic with 12.8 and 12.9, it still works fine as long as you don't want to transfer iPod games, so perhaps you have some local issue. Any anti-virus software that could be getting in the way? See Deploy apps in a business environment with iTunes - Apple Support if you want to try an older build which can transfer iPod games to the device.
tt2
So far so good! I did the DFU restore, plugged into the USB, iTunes recognized it, restored it, and now it's synching music. Would it be doing that if the HD was corrupt? It also seemed to be uploading a lot faster. I have an early 2011 Macbook Pro and just swapped out the HD for a SSD 2 TB and upgraded the memory to 8GB. We'll see! **fingers crossed** Thanks again!
So....really weird. It synched...but when it got to "Finishing Synching" it took about 30 min and then it wasn't showing on iTunes; but the screen still read "Connected". I had to go into Finder to eject it. The language screen came up again like it restored but when hit the "English" button, the selection screen came up showing my album art on the side and it took my music. Good right?? I plugged in headphones to see if it was playing and nothing. I restored it again. Next, it showed the song playing in "now playing" but no sound. When I got to work this AM, I got into the iPod setting and adjusted the volume, plugged into my Bose speaker and I'm getting sound. I'm shuffling all my songs now and it's playing great. However, the buttons are still slow to respond. It still seems choppy but it works. Lastly, when I plugged into my vehicle USB it couldn't recognize the device. I guess the good news is that all the 30 years of music I love is on it.
If there are/were pending sectors it may take more that one round of restore to eliminate them. They can make the device freeze up whenever it tries to read data from an unreadable sector. If it is part of song the iPod can just skip to the next one, but if it is part of the file system or the database that can be more problematic. It sounds as if you got over the hump.
tt2
Yes, DFU restore, low level format, or reformatting on the other platform, all have the potential to release any remaining pending sectors so they can be reallocated. Any pending sectors that are in active use can make the device unstable, which is why you want those freed up. The classic has 16,384 sectors set aside for this remapping, though anything more than a few thousand used would suggest a failing drive.
tt2
The overall total of reallocations and pendings is close enough to the maximum as makes no difference. You're unlikely to get all of the pendings converted without running into more problems. The drive is dead.
tt2
You're probably fine if you only load a small amount of content so nothing has to go outside the healthy or remapped regions, but clearly you're never going to be able to load it to full capacity again. The danger is that there are new problematic regions that will only be discovered when the device tries to read back from them.
tt2
When you get a chance look at the HDD stats as described in Corrupt iPod Classic. Ideally you want to see no pendings.
tt2
I’ve done all that. The ipod is fine. I think I need to go to an earlier version of iTunes. The last time I tried to synch the ipod was before the 12.8 update.
Thanks though! I’ll see how this works.
Before I start messing with iTunes, I put my iPod in disc mode and used disk utility to repair it. Now iTunes won't even the recognize my device. What now? Thanks!
When you say “restore” do you mean repeat the DFU restore till it irons it all out? I noticed it did skip past a few songs though. Thanks!!
iPod Classic 160gb 5th Gen won't sync
