iPod Harddrive Reformat: Windows vs. OS X
I apologize to the moderators for effectively double-posting (posted this in the iPod/iTunes section and gotten zero responses), but I've asked around everywhere (work, friends, other forums) and haven't gotten a definite answer regarding this issue. This is question that concerns not just myself, but anybody who owns a hard drive based iPod. Note that my iPod is working, but I'm still not able to understand the underpinnings of the hard drive reformatting issue.
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 or 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 re-synced my music files. I'm listening to it right now.
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.
Not sure if this is relevant to the discussion, but it's a 40 Gb 4th generation iPod that before the harddrive problem was formatted in HFS+.
Any ideas?
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 or 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 re-synced my music files. I'm listening to it right now.
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.
Not sure if this is relevant to the discussion, but it's a 40 Gb 4th generation iPod that before the harddrive problem was formatted in HFS+.
Any ideas?
Comments
My iPod Video got dunked in a glass of water it spazzed and looked like it was dead. I dried it out, reformatted on mac and it was very shakey. Once I reformatted on pc then back on mac again all was well.
Must be the total change of format that makes the difference
j.
Exactly the same thing happened with my 3th gen 15 GB iPod, everything stopt responding when i tried to update it. Then under windows it did work! Afterwards I synced the music back to my ipod but I had to do it in steps of 20 songs because to many songs an it began clicking again.
Originally posted by JavaCowboy
I apologize to the moderators for effectively double-posting (posted this in the iPod/iTunes section and gotten zero responses), but I've asked around everywhere (work, friends, other forums) and haven't gotten a definite answer regarding this issue. This is question that concerns not just myself, but anybody who owns a hard drive based iPod. Note that my iPod is working, but I'm still not able to understand the underpinnings of the hard drive reformatting issue.
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 or 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 re-synced my music files. I'm listening to it right now.
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.
Not sure if this is relevant to the discussion, but it's a 40 Gb 4th generation iPod that before the harddrive problem was formatted in HFS+.
Any ideas?
Windows formats the hard drive in FAT32
The reason switching back and forth probably helps the Ipod is because it would actually have to scrub the hard drive to set up the new disk format. While "restoring" the IPOD really does little more than delete any existing data and attempt there after to write over it.