My old 3rd gen iPod hard drive failed
recently. I had this iPod installed in
my 2006 Nissan with a converter from Nissan that made my iPod work via the XM
cable that was pre-installed in the car from the factory. I found
a cheap adapter on eBay that would convert a CF card to IDE. The item description said it would not work
on iPod Video or Classic 80gb. It was
around $4 with shipping. I then used a
Transcend CF card 32gb, 400x, part #TS32GCF400.
Make sure you shop for a CF to IDE adapter for Toshiba hard drive.
The most difficult part of this fix is getting the iPod
open. I have opened a few already to
replace batteries so I was fully ready for another fun few minutes. I used a utility knife. By scoring the edge of the iPod several times
over will help release it. Best bet is to
jump on YouTube and watch a video, there are plenty out there. But be super careful using a knife, you can cut
yourself or scratch your iPod if you slip!
After the iPod is open remove the battery plug in the
corner. Then remove the hard drive with
a gentle pull from the edge connector.
Install the CF card in the adapter and then plug it into the edge
connector on the iPod. I suggest you
leave the iPod open until you know iTunes can restore the hard drive. Plug the battery connector back in.
Next you need the dual cable that I think came with the
iPod. It has a Firewire and USB cables
on it. You also need the Firewire power
brick. For some reason iTunes will not
restore over the Firewire cable and it won’t restore it via the USB port unless
the iPod has power via the Firewire port!
I used Windows 7 x64 and iTunes 11.1.3.8. On my first attempt iTunes locked up
solid. I had to power cycle the iPod by
pulling the battery connector and reboot Windows. Pressing the menu and play buttons at the
same time did not help. On the 2nd
attempt I got a message that my iPod has been restored to factory settings! The 32gig flash card shows as 29.77GB of
usable space.
After I synced my music back to the iPod all appeared ok
until I tried to play some music. The
iPod quickly started cycling through songs about 1 per second. I went through the menu setup and changed a
few settings but it did not fix it. Once
I rebooted the iPod (Hold the pause and play buttons together) everything
worked as expected.
So for about $40 you can fix that old iPod. It’s also a nice upgrade if you keep it in
the car like I do. The flash drive won’t
get damaged when going over potholes. I
also had a problem when the temperature was below 20 degrees with the hard
drive, it would take about 30 minutes before it would start working. With the flash memory that won’t be an issue.
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