A few days ago my trusty 4th generation iPod died. It had the clicking hard drive of death and the screen message with the url to Apple iPod support. I tried an iTunes restore that didn’t work, then following some tips from the Apple discussion forums I tried Disk Utility’s first aid and even erase, all failed.

My wife gave me her color display iPod to use so I was back in business. I thought that I would do a postmortem dissection on my broke iPod just to see inside. However, today I decided to give the iPod repair one last try. I ran Disk Utility twice, failed the first time, but passed the second. Then I used to iTunes to restore the iPod and that succeeded! I copied some playlists and gave the iPod a try, seems fine. I wonder if running the battery down had anything to do with Disk Utility fixing the iPod. The other day the iPod hard drive was spinning uncontrolled and I couldn’t shut it down so I just set it aside for the weekend.

I think that I will keep my old iPod in my iHome and carry the wife’s iPod around as it is lighter.

Very interesting, Hank.  I’d very much like to hear some updates on this.

This is typical of failing hard disks. They may not work at all once, then may work again fine, whether for a day or for months before exhibiting problems again. Then again it could die for good tomorrow. Hopefully it’s the former.

I will keep you all updated

[quote author=“Bryan”]Very interesting, Hank.  I’d very much like to hear some updates on this.

I will keep you all updated. So far it seems fine, but yes it is probably hard drive on the slippery slope. For as much as these iPods get jostled around the hard drives are pretty reliable.