Just over eighteen months ago I purchased my second iPod, this one with video. It was to replace my ailing iPod Mini that only held a 5 hour charge, had a faulty click wheel and had trouble syncing. The Mini lasted 30 months before reaching this state. Shortly after buying my iPod with video, I started noticing skipping in the middle of my songs. Sometimes it would skip places in the song, but more often it would jump to another song. The tracks played fine in iTunes so I returned to the Apple Store and the Geniuses there look at it. Apple promptly replaced it and claimed it was a hard drive about to fail that was causing the issues. I continued to have periodic issues with the new iPod but mostly on tracks that had skipped previous to the replacement.

Upon connecting it, iTunes informed me the iPod was corrupt and needed to be restored.

Fast forward seven months. I bought an iPhone and noticed that the skipping was happening again on new tracks with my iPhone. I had Apple look at both my iPod and my iPhone and they found nothing wrong. Three months ago, after getting more tracks with issues, I took my computer, iPod and external hard drive that I keep my music on into the Apple Store. There were a couple of settings with my library that the tech found, namely I had moved the iTunes Library XML file to the external drive and it needs to remain on the main drive. This resolved most of my issues, but then we discovered that the skipping tracks were corrupt. We never looked at the iPod.

Then the hard drive with the music was corrupted and needed to be restored. I was able to hack my iPod and pulled my music off so it wasn’t totally lost.

Fast forward to this week. I don’t sync my iPod video often, but wanted to update it Wednesday night as I had finally completed updating all the ID3 tags for my music. Upon connecting it, iTunes informed me the iPod was corrupt and needed to be restored. So I complied with the iTunes request and clicked restore. Three hours later, iTunes informed me that the iPod restore had failed and I needed to reconnect it. So, once again I obeyed the mighty iTunes and reconnected and initiated a restore. Then I headed to bed.

Once enough sectors go bad, the drive just crashes.

Upon rising in the morning, I immediately proceeded to my computer to check my email and see the status of my iPod. The restore had failed again. I removed the iPod from the dock and immediately felt the hard drive spinning. Before I was able to get the iPod more than an arms length away, I heard that dreadful noise….Whhiiiiirrrrr, click, click, whhiiiiirrrrr. As someone who has spent years building and repairing computers, I knew that sound like I know my own voice. The hard drive would spin up to boot, the arms move into place unsuccessfully usually hitting a platter, and the drive spins down. The hard drive was dead and I was lucky if none of the platters had cracked. A trip to the Apple store confirmed my fears.  I never bought Applecare. I have never used any extended warranties I have ever bought, but I wanted one now. It would be $145 after tax and shipping to get my iPod repaired. A new nano is $149.

Before resorting to buying a new iPod, I thought I would try cracking the case open and seeing what Icould do with it. I had heard rumors that the drives used were the same connectors as Compact flash cards. I had a few of those at home for my DSLR, so if I could get it open, then maybe…. But for those wondering, the drives used now have a special ribbon cable for a connector and it is not compatible with Compact flash.

After reviewing a number of threads on the Apple discussion boards, I found a pattern of people with issues like mine. First tracks start to skip. This is caused by bad sectors, the iPod can’t read the next part of the song. Slowly this number of skips begins to increase. Because I had to pull my music from my iPod back to my computer, I had a large number of corrupted tracks (I am still finding some). Once enough sectors go bad, the drive just crashes. So this afternoon, I am off to the Apple Store once again. This time to get a new Nano and to get Applecare for my iPhone. The warranty expires Sunday, and I can’t risk losing my lifeline like my iPod.