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SirCastor · Jul 14, 2006, 12:18 PM

The Apple Store confirmed yesterday that my iPod is toast. The harddrive is making a fantastic clicking noise (sigh)

Anyone know the value of sending it in to 3rd parties?

(After all that, the good news is, I have an excuse to get a video iPod.)

analogika · Jul 14, 2006, 12:36 PM

You can get a hard drive and fix it yourself.

www.podmod.de and www.portatronic.de are two German sites; there's got to be at least a dozen stateside...

Arju · Jul 14, 2006, 04:34 PM

Yeah and with a 20GB Photo I wouldn't be surprised if you could fit a larger HD in there...

imitchellg5 · Jul 14, 2006, 10:35 PM

Or you could make it into the world's first iPod fishbowl for little goldfish.

ghporter · Jul 16, 2006, 09:10 AM

I read a lot of posts about screens, headphone jacks, and even dock connectors failing, but very few about hard drives dying. Is this as common as, say, displays breaking?

PlacidTubs · Jul 16, 2006, 09:29 AM

My 4th Gen 40Gb iPod's harddrive broke 3 times. After the third time I managed to persuade Apple to replace it with a 60Gb black video iPod (I was still under Applecare). Pretty sweet. Every cloud...

ghporter · Jul 16, 2006, 09:53 PM

My son's 4th Gen died due to a bad hard drive. I suspected it was not doing well-we'd had several problems like lockups and even visited the Genius Bar a couple times-so I bought AppleCare just before the original warranty expired. Good thing, too; I just took it in and the Genius wrote it up for replacement due to a bad hard drive.

Of course my son is not thrilled that they're going to replace it with a like model...he hoped they'd just give him a new 30GB Video iPod. Yeah, right.

So I was curious how frequent these drives fail because my son's did. In today's paper (I just got to read it) there was an article about the booming business of repairing iPods, and one entrepeneur said that the most common problem he saw was the drive, and his reason was the way iPods get handled. Can't fault his logic.

dampeoples · Jul 16, 2006, 10:30 PM

I've on my 3rd 20GB in 1.5 years, all bad drives. Hooray for Applecare.
I too, secretly wished for a Video iPod, no such luck

kahuna · Jul 17, 2006, 09:06 PM

remember that there is a tiny hard drive inside your ipod. (except nanos and shuffles). try taking your laptop and toss it about the way you do with your ipod and see if that HD doesn't show signs of failure.
maybe a nano is a better choice?

SirCastor · Jul 17, 2006, 10:09 PM

I treat my iPod very well, I imagine most people do. What's really sad about my situation is that I was just about 2 weeks past the year-long coverage. Sigh.

imitchellg5 · Jul 17, 2006, 10:21 PM

These guys seem to have a lot of iPod parts including the hard drives. http://www.ipodparts.com/

kahuna · Jul 18, 2006, 12:46 AM

"I treat my iPod very well, I imagine most people do"

i have seen some ipods that are bent, dented, scratched. not everyone treats them the same. and the younger the user the more likely the external damage. yes MOST people do treat them well. but HD damage is unknown even with the slightest drop or impact.

kahuna · Jul 18, 2006, 12:48 AM

i have personally turned my 3rd gen into a 10gb shuffle by accident. its an ugly feeling.

analogika · Jul 18, 2006, 07:24 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

So I was curious how frequent these drives fail because my son's did. In today's paper (I just got to read it) there was an article about the booming business of repairing iPods, and one entrepeneur said that the most common problem he saw was the drive, and his reason was the way iPods get handled. Can't fault his logic.

True.

iPod failure rate is only half that of the next-best competitor, IIRC - it's somewhere around 6% within warranty. This puts Apple at #1 reliability in the mp3-player market. (Trekstor's failure rate, for example, is at around 17%.)

And I've seen iPods that simply defy belief. It's amazing how some people will completely fail to take even rudimentary care of a $400 electronics device.