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The Joel on Software Discussion Group (CLOSED)

Wanted to pass along this most helpful tip:

My daughter's iPod was dead -- tried recharging, restting, putting into disk mode, etc. -- nothing worked.  Couldn't even mount the iPod to do a restore.

One suggestion I read on Internet was to listen for the hard disk to spin up after reset.  I did this and didn't hear anything.  Then I remembered reading somewhere a long time ago that the hard disk occassionally gets "stuck" and can be unstuck by giving the iPod a gentle rap against a hard surface (e.g., tabletop).

I did this and the darn thing started right up, with all software and music right where it belonged!

and eventually it will fail and you or your daughter will throw down another $300.

and eventually your PC will fail and you'll throw down another $1500.

and eventually your car will fail and you'll thrown another $20000.

etc...

Or I could throw down another $300 now.  I prefer to wait.

BillT,

Don't mind Lemon, he's got a quota of negative remarks to make every month or he loses his pension.  Sometimes he gets desperate and hit and runs a good post like yours.

About the iPod, did you say *gentle* rap? 

*crash*

>> and eventually your PC will fail and you'll throw down another $1500.

>> and eventually your car will fail and you'll thrown another $20000.

Uh, you must buy crappy brands.  I've never replaced a PC or car due to failure (knock on wood).  I have PCs 10+ years old in storage that still work like the day they were new.

Pretty off topic in this forum, but yes, iPods do fail from time to time, at least the HD-based. Harddisks are just a little to fragile for such a device I think.

Funny, the same exact thing happened to me like 5 days ago. 

My iPod appeared totally hosed.  I couldn't even do a factory reset, because the stupid SOFTWARE updater application couldn't connect to it (nice engineering, Apple).  And the iPod hard drive was making these nasty clicking sounds.  It sounded really bad.

I tried for like 2 or 3 hours to get it to do the factory reset.  Recharged the battery, etc.

Finally, online, I read that just have to give it a good whack.  So I held it in my left hand, and hit it firmly on the side with my right hand.

Whala!!  The HDD test I was running in diagnostic mode stopped hanging.  I rebooted the iPod and was able to factory reset it from the updater.

Now I'm wondering how long it will last.  The drive clicking seemed really bad.  Apparently the "head gets stuck", which is kind of scary.

The wonders of the internet.

From two minutes of Googling it appears that one can replace the HDD in an iPod.  Sounds like a $40 fix, not a $300 fix - unless the HDDs for iPods are stupidly expensive.

>HDDs for iPods are stupidly expensive.

They are, in low consumer volume

I'm reading a book right now about planned obsolescence.  "Death dating," the practice of designing a product to fail at a given point in its life so the consumer must buy new, is part of this.

It seems to me that putting a hard disk spinning at 3,600+rpm inside of a device that the designers know will not be treated with even the respect given to a notebook computer, is planned obsolescence.

It also doesn't make sense to me that people would buy a device subject to this usage that contains an inherently fragile component like a hard disk.

iPods seem to do quite well.  I know some people with some Gen1's that are still in use.  Apple, though, has been spending a lot more time and money working on flash-based players.  When the 20GB Gen1's came out, the best Flash player was only like 256MB of storage.

My 2nd Gen (1st Gen Winpod) still runs perfectly well. I only purchased a new 5g video iPod because I filled the 10Gb drive on the old one.

I buy virtually all my music via iTunes now. Buying single songs at $.99 vs buying 100 or so CD's a year at $15.99 means I'm saving almost enough for two new iPods every year.

The "Click of Death" you refer to is indeed due to the drive arms getting jammed. Be aware, however, that this often occurs precisely *because* the unit has been dropped. My original 30GB iPod (Gen 2 or 3?) had the problem and proved fixable after a HD reformat. My 40GB Gen 4 iPod had the problem and was fixable for a while by the concussive maintenance program (i.e., dropping on a carpeted floor), but eventually it failed and now is sitting on my shelf, waiting for me to buy a 60GB drive to replace it with. I can't be without an iPod, though, so I bought one of the newest ones, the 60GB iPod Video model, which is still under warranty. I'm taking extra care with it, and I sure hope it lasts longer than 14 months (which is how long the Gen 4 lasted). It really is nice, btw, but I sure wish it was possible to make the machine with 60GB of Flash RAM instead of a micro hard drive.

It's possible, but you probably wouldn't be able to afford it! ;-)

and the iPod drive failing is not covered under it's warranty?  How long is the warranty good for on those things anyways?

iPod standard warranty is one year. My average time to drive failure has been 15 months.

>> It also doesn't make sense to me that people would buy a device subject to this usage that contains an inherently fragile component like a hard disk.

Well, I can't speak for iPods, but my Rio with a hard drive has traveled the world with me, gone jogging, gone snowboarding, gone hiking, been dropped countless times, and there's no evidence whatsoever of any damage to the hard drive (though the case is all dented).  So I wouldn't say these devices are "inherently fragile".

Yeah, Steve Jobs I think said that iPods are only supposed to last 2-3 years.  15 months sounds about right.

I bought my ipod 18 months ago, and the drive started failing  3 months ago.

I'm surprised you keep buying them.  This is my first iPod, and will likely be my last, unless this one lasts 5 more years.  There's no excuse for it not to last 5-10 years.

They should put that on their fun little advertisements: "This crap only lasts 15 months".

Moosebumps: I totally agree these things should last at minimum 5 years. It enormously pisses me off that they don't even last two. I only keep buying them because I'm addicted. Can't be without my tunes.

And I certainly do notice a difference between iTunes on the Mac and on the PC. PC is *much* slower, doesn't handle as many characters in song titles, etc., and all in all just feels like a fish out of water. Flies on the Mac, though. In fact, about the only thing I use my 5-year-old Mac for these days is iTunes, because it works much more speedily there than on my year-old high-end Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard PC with 2 gigs of RAM and SOA drives.

Something could be wrong with your machine. I have both a macbook and a PC and iTunes works pretty much the same on both (its faster on the PC, but it should be).

You may be right, but you should consider the possibility you have an issue with your pc.

anon, I have considered that issue, and I have to report that the speed difference is noticeable when compared with other high-end PCs, such as the one I use at work and several that my friends have. We even did a comparison metric for importing about 50 identical tracks (we all own the same Radiohead albums, so that was a good test) and the PCs were slower. Also changing a category on 100 tracks was noticeably slower on PC.

Simple tasks appear to be the same, however. It's only when there's some kind of file-system access going on that there's a problem.