i'm a gadget-hungry girl. i always have been. once upon a time, when a beloved walkman died, it was with mixed emotion that i hauled out its sad carcass, as i knew that buying a new one was just around the corner. omnomnom gadgetsssss. in fact, the last walkman i ever bought was a panasonic (i was always a panasonic girl) silver slim thing and it was gorgeous and i loved it, even though it cost £70.
but i'm 27 now, and have literally put thousands of pounds into the great gadget economy since i was a frivolous teen. purchase choice now is now made with a priority of:
this is why, although i love music and have a wonderful mp3 collection that stretches back years, i only use for my portable music, a 2nd Generation iPod Nano 4GB (which as we know, translates into 3.67GB usable space). i love it dearly, but recently felt the need for greater capacity. so i turned to eBay.
i bought myself a 20GB 4th Gen iPod for just under £40. cosmetically very good condition, apparently new battery fitted recently and everything was hunky/dory.
so, beloved newOld iPod worked for about half a day and then screwed up in the middle of a sync: click click whirrrrr. argh. click click clunk. arrrrgh. much trying to format bad sectors later, i got the awful "folder/support" icon. frantically opened it up once or twice to try the *slap* trick and it eventually spat out a "sad ipod" icon. cause of all this: Hard Drive Fail. after fighting down the gollum-like urge to buy a brand new iPod touch, i ordered a new HDD, flexed my geekgirl tech muscles and jumped right into to replacing the hard drive myself.
>> Not bored yet? Read the bit where i fixed it, got the girl and saved the day...
The Fixing Bit
okok, i tired you enough already. don't worry, though - it's real easy to run through the actual steps. lucky for me, i stumbled on this great guide by Josh Highland, without this i would've had to piece the steps together myself - many thanks!
1: Find A Buggered iPod
well, i was lucky enough to have my iPod brick on me without (much) provocation, but if you want to play along at home, you might have to hunt around for your own cream-crackered iPod. this should be easy enough, as apple's build quality and internal design is a bit sketchy at best (ouch, steve jobs. ouch.), specifically in the older models. (1st-4th gen iPods)
1a: How Do I Know My iPod Is iBuggered?
oh, well, the buggeration of an old iPod can manifest itself in seemingly infinite symptoms. firstly, and i didn't realise it when i used mine on monday, a hard drive that's on the way out can make some pretty loud noises as it seeks the data. other signs that your iPod may not be long for this mortal coil: wigging out in the middle of songs, skipping randomly, not syncing properly (although this may be a bad mp3 file, you know) all of these culminating in the classic "folder" icon on your lcd display, and eventually the dreaded "sad iPod icon". in my case, i first had misgivings when it wouldn't sync past about 10GB of music. ¬_¬
2: Get a New HDD
this is easy peasy. find a good retailer on eBay and get yourself the appropriate model. my 4th generation takes the MK2004GAL model, but i could also use the 2006 HDD that was used in the 4th gen iPod Photos. it cost £25 with p&p included, and was shipped via special delivery. a good retailer will send it out through a good postal service as it's important to know it'll be well looked after en route - HDDs are finicky little things.
3: Get Your Tools Together
for this experiment, you will need, to whit:
1 x pen knife or other thin implement (fnar, fnar)
1 x iPod
1 x firewire cable/wall charger (v. necessary)
1 x usb cable if you haven't got a firewire port to sync through with your pc/mac/etc (optional)
1 x guitar plectrum
1 x spanky new HDD
1 x courage (abundance of)
set everything out nice and neat so you feel like you're special. oh, here's a tip: chances are when your hdd was dying, your battery was running out like a mo' fo' too, as the bloody thing keeps trying to restart and restart, so you'll need some means of charging your iPod. if you don't have a wall charger (or firewire cable/port), get one. you'll need it for when your iPod restores. i have no idea why usb won't work - something to do with the older models, i presume.
4: Open Up Your iPod
- this is the very unorthodox bit -
this is by far the trickiest bit, i found. i looked a bit online, and found that this guy's method is a better description of events than i could give, so pop off and read it and come back. anyway - the case was so tight i did have to make a wee dent in my metal backing with a pen knife to make room for my Ani DiFranco plectrum to squeeze between the metal back and front cover. you should also remember to put your iPod on hold, because you'll end up switching the damn' thing on later if you're not careful.
5: Have A Rummage
time to be careful careful now, lay everything out - and take great pains not to disconnect anything by accident! i'm talking battery wires (botom right of the main case), headphone jack/hold connectors (glued to the rear backing) and hdd cables (at the top of your hdd).
6: Take Out Your Old HDD
look at the top of the hdd. you can see the black bit that's connecting the hdd to the ipod logic board. if you lift up your cowardly old hdd using the top connector as a hinge (CAREFULLY), you'll see that it's attached via a ribbon (which appears to be randomly taped to the logic board, i mean wtf?), just like a teeny tiny fairy-like IDE cable. aww. so, carefully remove this cable from the top of the hdd - it'll just come loose using a bit of pressure. you now have the very essence - essence, i say - of iPoddery in your hands. oooooOOOOooh.
O HAI: if your hard drive is not completely fux0red, removing and reattaching the ide cable may help to restore your iPod back to full health, so you may be able to avoid replacing the costly hdd altogether by reassembling the iPod after doing this and trying it - you never know, it just might work.
7: Rubber Up
now that your old hdd is safely out of the way, you can take the funky blue padding off it by gently coaxing it off, and gently uncoaxing it onto the new drive. it should fit nice and snug - and do try to remember which way round it all goes.
next, use your guitar pick (or the lovely josh suggested one of those razor thingies you use to get the paint off've shiny surfaces) and patiently sort of scrape the last bit of foam off the body of the hard drive.
josh also suggests sticking this lot back onto the new hdd with a spot of glue, but there was enough adhesive still on the foam for me to keep it in place - not to mention my concerns at melting glue with the hella heat that comes off these old iPods!
8: Whack It In, I Say!
ooooh so close! right, so re-attach the hdd cable to the new hdd. they belong together, they're soulmates, they are. so... yeah. press it gently into position.
9: Close It Up
now, carefully close your iPod case again, and try to think positive thoughts as you attach it to your pc.
10: Restore (or "Hold Your Breath And Cross Your Fingers")
so... iTunes will have a look at your iPod, and hopefully it'll be obsessing about restoring it. that's fine, it's a natural urge. let it restore it. now, if you've got firewire (and all goes to plan) it should finish the restore and be telling you the iPod will be restarting (and that the dialog will close in 10 seconds) or something like that. if you don't, it'll want connecting into a wall charger to complete the restore. once you've done all this, you should see a wee status bar on the screen of your (now-happy) iPod. everything good. if you kept it connected to the firewire all this time, as i did, once you've selected your language on the iPod and checked your "about" bit in the settings to make sure all is well, you'll need to disconnect the iPod from the poot and reconnect it before iTunes will look at it properly and give it a name.
i named mine "iPob". and i love it.
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