iPod Harddrive Reformat: Windows vs. OS X
A couple of months ago my iPod died on me. At the time, I had a G4 MacMini. The iPod made a bunch of clicking noises when it tried to reload and it displayed either the sad face of the file folder icon indicating something was wrong with the apple.com/support/ipod URL. I followed all the steps, including putting the iPod into "SAFE mode" and running the iPod updater to restore the iPod to factory settings. I even tried running the Disk Utility to reformat the harddrive on the iPod. None of these solutions worked, so I gave up.
A week ago, I found a blog where somebody took his iPod apart and replaced the harddrive, restoring it to working condition. One of the responders to the blog said that he simply hooked it up to a Windows machine and had it reformat the iPod's harddrive, subsequently running the iPod Update in Windows. I figured I'd give this a try, but since my company forbids (and logs) hooking up USB devices to company computers, it was harder for me to get a hold of a Windows machine than I thought.
Finally, I went to my friend's place tonight to use his XP machine reformat my iPod. Despite the fact that it was formatted in NTFS and the fact that it complained that the reformatting was not successfully complete, I was able to successfully run the Windows iPod Updater. Once I got home, I hooked it up to a power outlet to complete the reformatted, and it's re-syncing itself to my playlist as we speak. All indications are that it's now working correctly.
What I don't understand is why the Disk Utility couldn't reformat it (it hung for hours), but Windows was able to.
I'm really annoyed about this, despite the fact that my iPod is now working again.
A week ago, I found a blog where somebody took his iPod apart and replaced the harddrive, restoring it to working condition. One of the responders to the blog said that he simply hooked it up to a Windows machine and had it reformat the iPod's harddrive, subsequently running the iPod Update in Windows. I figured I'd give this a try, but since my company forbids (and logs) hooking up USB devices to company computers, it was harder for me to get a hold of a Windows machine than I thought.
Finally, I went to my friend's place tonight to use his XP machine reformat my iPod. Despite the fact that it was formatted in NTFS and the fact that it complained that the reformatting was not successfully complete, I was able to successfully run the Windows iPod Updater. Once I got home, I hooked it up to a power outlet to complete the reformatted, and it's re-syncing itself to my playlist as we speak. All indications are that it's now working correctly.
What I don't understand is why the Disk Utility couldn't reformat it (it hung for hours), but Windows was able to.
I'm really annoyed about this, despite the fact that my iPod is now working again.
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