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@$%# ipod

AndrewAndrew
edited February 2007 in Technology
Ok, this is my second broken iPod. They were both 60 gig video iPods and both of them have had damaged hard drives. The first one I got replaced under warranty in October. The replacement is second broken iPod. However, the warranty ran out in December. It seems that the Apple HD's are just too easily damaged as neither of them have suffered any serious drops and both were in cases. My question to you, the brainless collective of the fourm, what should I do? Here are my possible solutions:
  1. Replace the HD with a new one at a third party retailer. Approx $150
  2. Sell the iPod for parts. With everything pretty much brand new apart from the HD, I could get a pretty penny for it (At best, half of its value). I could then either:
    • Get a new HD based iPod.
    • Get a nano.
    • Get some other mp3 player.
    • Keep the money as a profit (The original was a gift from my ex).
  3. Lie on eBay and sell it as a PS3.
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Comments

  • AprecheApreche
    First, see if you can get a free iPod from Apple. Get whatever warranty service you can worm your way into. Spending no money is always the best answer. If that doesn't work, sell the iPod for whatever you can get for it. There is someone out there with the same iPod, but the screen is broken. They will love to have your broken iPod. Try to sell it on Craigslist before eBay. If you must buy a new player, I highly recommend the Sansa. I would have gotten the Sansa instead of the nano if it were available at the time.
  • AndrewAndrew
    First, see if you can get a free iPod from Apple.
    My iPod won't boot, it had an error message. So I went this past weekend. No Dice. In addition the "genius" at the genius bar was totally clueless. I got to the mall at 1 and the earliest iPod spot was at 7. So I signed up for it and went back to my dorm to chill until it was time. When I finally got to the store, I told the guy "I think the HD is shot. This happened on my earlier one. He said "ok, let me take it to the back of the store" (where I couldn't see him). He came back with it working, marginally. I asked him, "So how did you get it to boot?" He replied with the answer, "oh I just smashed the buttons until it came on again..."(Some "genius"). I asked about warranty and he said that there was nothing I could do to get a free one. He then gave me a sheet of three local retailers that would either replace the HD or buy it for parts. From the past two days of operation, the iPod has been slow to change songs/follow operations, if it is even responsive. I can hear the hard drive struggling to register the data by repetitive clicking and buzzing. I'll probably sell it for parts and get something new. The problem is that if I get a new non-iPod player I'll have to spend all the time stripping the DRM to get it to work on it (FUCK YOU iTUNES!).
  • SailSail
    I know tons of people who have dropped or damaged their iPod, walked into the Apple Store, said it "stopped working", and were handed a new one, no questions asked. No problem.
  • Josh BytesJosh Bytes
    Dumb question but have you tried to restore it? Every few months I will wipe everything off my IPOD and restore it back to factory settings. My 20 gig IPOD is going on 2 years now and I haven't had a much trouble with it other than the fact that the battery doesn't stay charged as long as it's supposed to.
  • HMTKSteveHMTKSteve
    Have you tried the Diagnostic mode?
    Is the battery dead?
  • tuttle88tuttle88
    Is it insured? Cause when I lost my iPod the insurance company gave me a cheque for $500. I actually lost mine, I don't recommend insurance fraud.
  • AprecheApreche
    The problem is that if I get a new non-iPod player I'll have to spend all the time stripping the DRM to get it to work on it (FUCK YOU iTUNES!).
    That's your fault for buying DRM encumbered music. You dug your own hole, now get in.
  • RymRym
    My silver trumpet was insured for some $5000 (based on appraisal and a somewhat naive insurance adjuster). There were a few times at uni where I almost seriously considered "losing" it. =P
  • HungryJoeHungryJoe
    edited February 2007
    I had this sort of problem with my player, a Creative Nomad Zen Jukebox. I fell when I was walking my dogs and the fall screwed up the drive. I have a friend who is a big computer/IT guy. He has his own IT company and stuff. He speculated that retrieving data from broken players could be a good side business, and so he'd try to fix it as kind of an experiment. That was in April. He'd replaced the drive, but he's still trying to unscramble the data from the old drive. Most of that music is not replaceable and, of course, I have no backup. Before you say anything - I always back up documents, but I guess I'm just too old and unhip for it to have occurred to me that I needed to back up what was on a portable mp3 player.

    I know it's a big deal to try to retrieve the data, but exactly how hard is it? Do I have any hope at all of ever having this data retrieved?
    Post edited by HungryJoe on
  • RymRym
    Basically, if you can't retrieve the data from a broken storage device with a simple recovery program in short order, you're boned. The next level of data recovery often costs a great deal and has a low success rate.

    It also depends on how the data are lost. Physically destroyed media are almost impossible to recover. Physically damaged media can be recovered in some cases at great expense, but still often not at all. Many times, even if you get data, they're not in the form of complete files, but instead are fragments of the data from those files. While this is useful in forensic analysis (figuring out what a file contained in a criminal investigation), it's not useful for you (wanting the files themselves back in order to play them).

    Now, cryptographically lost data are an entirely different matter. Practically speaking, you will not be able to recover encrypted data for which you no longer have the decryption key.
  • HMTKSteveHMTKSteve

    While this is useful in forensic analysis (figuring out what a file contained in a criminal investigation), it's not useful for you (wanting the files themselves back in order to play them).

    What if it was some weird techno or rap music? It might sound even better being all messed up!
  • RymRym
    What if it was some weird techno or rap music? It might sound even better being all messed up!
    Heh.. Actually, a great many of the mp3 files I "collected" back in the days before Napster et al. had corrupted frames, improper encodings, and bitstream errors. I assure you, there is no kind of digital distortion in psychoacoustically derived compression methods that sounds good in any kind of music. ^_~
  • HMTKSteveHMTKSteve
    edited February 2007
    What if it was some weird techno or rap music? It might sound even better being all messed up!
    Heh.. Actually, a great many of the mp3 files I "collected" back in the days before Napster et al. had corrupted frames, improper encodings, and bitstream errors. I assure you, there is no kind of digital distortion in psychoacoustically derived compression methods that sounds good in any kind of music. ^_~
    That is why I was a late adopter of digital cell phones. The early ones were real bad with cutting out while the analog ones would just get staticy if you had a bad signal...
    Post edited by HMTKSteve on
  • KilarneyKilarney
    Does anyone know how to set the iPod to begin podcasts at the 1 second mark. Mine still hangs every now and then. Is there an easy way to do this, without having to make the adjustment in every podcast entry?
  • AprecheApreche
    Does anyone know how to set the iPod to begin podcasts at the 1 second mark. Mine still hangs every now and then. Is there an easy way to do this, without having to make the adjustment in every podcast entry?
    I don't know why you have this weird problem. I have an iPod and iTunes, and I never have this issue. Resolve the issue rather than trying to implement a workaround.
  • KilarneyKilarney
    edited February 2007
    You don't have a 2nd gen Nano. It's a common problem amongst 2nd gen owners. Much smarter people than I have found no solution, except to start podcasts at the 1 second mark.

    I'd say my iPod freezes about 1 in 10 times when I start a podcast. It only happens if it's not in stereo.
    Post edited by Kilarney on
  • SailSail
    The problem is that if I get a new non-iPod player I'll have to spend all the time stripping the DRM to get it to work on it (FUCK YOU iTUNES!).
    That's your fault for buying DRM encumbered music. You dug your own hole, now get in.
    The simple solution is to just Bittorrent all the music you bought in the iTunes store. You already legally paid for it, so why can't you download it again?
  • AprecheApreche
    You don't have a 2nd gen Nano. It's a common problem amongst 2nd gen owners. Much smarter people than I have found no solution, except to start podcasts at the 1 second mark.

    I'd say my iPod freezes about 1 in 10 times when I start a podcast. It only happens if it's not in stereo.
    Wow, I can't believe it. I have a 1st gen nano. This might be the first instance of 1st gen being less buggy than 2nd gen.
  • Victor FrostVictor Frost
    I had a similar experience with my Creative Labs Zen Nano Plus 1GB. After a while, it wouldn't start anymore. After reinstalling the firmware, it worked again, but then it died again after a week. I'm currently struggling with Creative to get a RMA on it. Luckily, the Zen series is a non-DRM product. To borrow a phrase from Rym, iTunes can die in a fire.
  • HMTKSteveHMTKSteve
    Just right click on the podcast and set it on the option page to start at 00:01. I had this problem for a while and fixed it by reformating my ipod.
  • RoosterRooster
    I think I had the same problem a while back with my 5th gen 30 Gig video. It was because my firmware was version 1.2. I had to upgrade to 1.2.1 and it worked beautifully (I even got those cool letters as you scroll through the music library).
  • KilarneyKilarney
    Just right click on the podcast and set it on the option page to start at 00:01. I had this problem for a while and fixed it by reformating my ipod.
    Okay... call me stupid but I don't see where that option is.
  • HMTKSteveHMTKSteve
    Okay... call me stupid but I don't see where that option is.
    When you right-click you select the properties menu item. It will be on one of the tabs.
  • booyadudebooyadude
    edited June 2007
    I'm not sure if it's the same problem but 12 days after my warranty expired i plugged my 60 gig iPod video in and iTunes said it was corrupted, i tried to restore it but nothing happened so i can only assume that it's a problem with the hardware which basically means i'm SCREWED. I havn't dropped it on the ground or in the water. It boots up and i can scroll through the menu, it even appears in iTunes. It just won't let me copy anything over.

    In short, take the time to strip the DRM, sell it for parts and get something that is not an iPod
    Post edited by booyadude on
  • OmnutiaOmnutia
    If the hard drive powers up you might want to try a program called spinwrite (spinrite*?) which is supposed to be able to recover a corrupted iPod hard drive.
  • RatchetRatchet
    A bit late to be posting I know but a lot of people say negative shit about the i-pod. But really it is one of the best things on the market (DRMed music aside.) I made the sad mistake of getting a Zune (because I have an X-box 360 and got caught in the trap of "oh cool! I can play my videos downloaded on my Zune.) Unfortunately I didn't know that it was actually a piece of shit that turns off by itself every 3 hours or so. On top of that even though DRM is evil the I-tunes store is a way more superior product in comparison only because of what you can get. On the Zune Marketplace there is only music no video's, games, or anything else that they claimed they would have. Yea I can be patient and wait till it's marketplace gets bigger but what aggravates me is the fact that the X-box live Marketplace has way more stuff video wise than Zune's and yet you can't use it even though you are still paying with Microsoft points. So remember that next time you bitch about an I-pod. Yea I have dug my own grave in a sense but at least I will be getting an I-pod soon thank god!
  • AprecheApreche
    I don't consider the marketplace or music store is a factor in determining which player is better. You shouldn't be buying music, videos or games for your portable device. You should just be getting free non-drm stuff from elsewhere. The only advantage of the iPod is that it has the best podcast support. This will probably remain true until someone makes a player that can subscribe to podcasts over wifi.
  • SailSail

    This will probably remain true until someone makes a player that can subscribe to podcasts over wifi.

    Or at least organize them decently in their own directory. If it wasn't for that, I would switch away from my iPod almost instantly. All someone would have to do is copy the iPod's podcast support and they've got me practically sold.
  • NeitoNeito
    edited June 2007
    Or at least organize them decently in their own directory. If it wasn't for that, I would switch away from my iPod almost instantly. All someone would have to do is copy the iPod's podcast support and they've got me practically sold.
    I never bother with podcast programs. I just use Google Reader, download them, and throw them on an SD card so I can listen to them on my PocketPC. It's not really that much work.
    Post edited by Neito on
  • AprecheApreche
    Or at least organize them decently in their own directory. If it wasn't for that, I would switch away from my iPod almost instantly. All someone would have to do is copy the iPod's podcast support and they've got me practically sold. I never bother with podcast programs. I just use Google Reader, download them, and throw them on an SD card so I can listen to them on my PocketPC. It's not really that much work.
    That's too much effort for me. In iTunes I subscribe and it automatically puts new episodes on the iPod and removes then after I have listened. Once you have that experience, you can't settle for anything less.
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