Diagnostics

To conduct diagnostics you should start your iPod in diagnostic mode. To do that press simultaneously and hold “Menu” and “Select” buttons until iPod starts reloading. When the apple appears on the screen, press “Select” and Playback button. Thus a diagnostic menu will pop up. Here you can check most functions of the iPod. In my case I had to do S.M.A.R.T. check. If the reallocated sector count value has increased (I did this check after each attempt to recover data with iTunes) the problem is surely with the hard drive.

For a deeper HDD diagnostics, put your iPod in mass storage mode. To do that press simultaneously and hold “Menu” and “Select” until reloading starts. When the apple appears on the screen press and hold “Menu” and “Play\Pause” until the message “OK to disconnect” appears. Now connect your iPod to PC.

You will need a special tool to run disk platter check for bad sectors. As for me, I used Victoria. I think it is necessary to mention that the hard drive will switch off if it has a certain amount of bad blocks. (You may skip this piece of information if you already know it. Anyway I faced this problem. So now I feel obliged to inform you about it.) Besides, Victoria started to report “ABRT” errors. The only way out is to stop the check, disconnect and connect the iPod to the PC once again and then to run the check from the point where errors started popping up (or from the point slightly removed from the spot were errors started popping up so to cut off the dead chunk of the disk platter). The aim of this stage is to finally verify that the error was caused by the HDD failure and to find the biggest alive chunk of the disk platter which will be cut out later for further use.

Recovery. Attempt №1.

The only known to me way to continue using HDD is to use the reduced size HDD after the dead chunk has been cut out from it. This method is not a reliable one – the hard drive may fail any moment but it is cheap, especially if you don’t have money for a new one (a new HDD for iPod Classic is about $100).

Having googled for iPod hard drive partitioning, I found nothing but a bunch of small articles. The suggested solutions didn’t work with my iPod because the beginning of the disk platter which contained the file table was lost.

Recovery. Attempt №2.

I continued the search and found Rockbox (http://www.rockbox.org/). Rockbox - is a free and open-source replacement for the OEM firmware in various forms of digital audio players with an original kernel. The tool also works with Apple but iPod Classic is identified by the application as incompatible. If you go to the site of the tool: (http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/TargetStatus#New_Platforms_Currently_Under_Development) and look for iPod Classic in the list of the compatible devices you will see that only Dual Boot (technology to give opportunity of choice between original and Rockbox firmware) is not compatible. This is not that important so you may continue.

Rockbox installation is facilitated by the project freemyipod (http://www.freemyipod.org) and its product – emCore (http://www.freemyipod.org/wiki/EmCORE). EmCore is a boot loader for Rockbox.

Installation sequence.

For Linux: http://www.freemyipod.org/wiki/EmCORE_Installation/iPodClassic/PrepareDFULinux.

MacOs is incompatible.

For Windows (XP/Vista/7/8):

1. Install iTunes if you have not done it yet.
2. Connect your iPod to the PC.
3. Close iTune if it is started. Terminate processes «AppleMobileDeviceService.exe» and «iTunesHelper.exe».
4. Download a file from http://files.freemyipod.org/misc/bootstrap_ipodclassic_itunes.exe
5. Unblock your iPod.
6. Put the iPod in DFU mode. To do that press simultaneously and hold “Menu” and “Select”. When the apple appears on the screen, continue to hold “Menu” and “Select” buttons. Release only after the display goes black.
7. Wait until all new devices get installed.
8. Run the downloaded file. Wait for the indication of successful installation.
9. If you do everything correctly «UMSboot» - 64MB hard drive will become accessible in the device list. If it has not become accessible install all drivers and run again bootstrap_ipodclassic_itunes.exe

By this time your PC should recognize UMSboot device. For a more recent version, follow the link: http://www.freemyipod.org/wiki/EmCORE_Releases. Record the downloaded file to the UMSboot hard drive. Remove safely the hard drive: go to My Computer and right click on the UMSboot device and select “Eject” (Do precisely as I mention. Any other safe drive removal won’t work!). Now you may disconnect the iPod from the PC.

Follow the on-screen instructions. Read the warning message and confirm that you refuse from warranty service by pressing simultaneously “Menu” and “Play\Pause”. After this the firmware replacement process will begin. The process is accompanied by simultaneous hard drive formatting. In my case it took a lot of time since the hard drive was severely damaged. First I thought that the iPod got stuck. So I reloaded it two times (to do this press simultaneously and hold “Menu” and “Select”) but in vain. It turned out that one should just wait. In my case it took 3 to 4 hours.

When replacement of firmware is done, the boot loader menu will appear on the screen. Select “Rockbox”. The boot loader will inform you of the missing «rockbox.ipod» file. Don’t pay attention to this message. After Rockbox has been booted, connect the iPod to the PC again. The PC will detect iPod hard drive but you may face problem while trying to repartition it. In my case neither of tools compatible with Windows could perform this task. Only fdisk for Linux worked with the hard drive. This application arranged the partition table the way I wanted. Here is the list of commands:

# sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
o
n
p
1
[the first sector of the alive chunk of HDD (sector size of the HDD – 4096 bites]
[the last sector of the alive chunk of HDD or +[plus]{K,M,G}]
t
c
w
# sudo mkfs.cfat /dev/sdb1

It is very important to assign appropriate label to the volume, namely “Windows (0xOC)”. Otherwise neither emCore nor Rockbox will detect the volume.

After disk partitioning and formatting is done, download a file from http://www.freemyipod.org/wiki/EmCORE_Releases). Extract all files form the downloaded archive to the iPod HDD.

Short Summary

The new firmware turned out not very stable. The iPod got stuck several times during the first week after firmware replacement. The backlight went down (pictures froze on the screen). Sound looped in headphones. Simultaneous pressing “Menu” and “Select” (button combination to reset iPod) had no effect. The only way to bring iPod back to operating condition was to wait until the battery goes off or to take it out. It is likely that the failure occurred when FLAC files were played. However this assumption has not been yet substantiated.