iPod Classic Issue (Freezing iTunes)

Good Morning,

My iPod classic is probably my most important gadget. I listen to music for large portions of my day and it's having an issue which is currently killing me, so any help is welcomed!

First, when I had been syncing my ipod for years, it would note it may be corrupted, which I ignored, as it continued to always work and sync. Hell, I synced it a week ago just fine.

When I was plugging in my iPod last night, Itunes froze and it wouldn't sync my ipod. We then downloaded itunes on another computer to see what would happen, and it did the same thing.

We tried restoring my ipod to factory settings (After updated itunes) and when plugging it in, itunes freezes and the ipod stays in disk mode/do not disconnect.

When unplugging it, it notes i have to restore it using itunes, so everything was lost.

I ran diagnostics mode auto test and everything worked fine.

Any suggestions on what to do to fix this?

9:10 am update

I downloaded another update to itunes, i plugged the ipod in with itunes running. it now doesn't freeze, however, the ipod says "ok to disconnect" but when i do, nothing happens. when i reboot the ipod, it says i need to plug it in to restore.

9:26 am updated

it looks like itunes wasn't recognizing the ipod. I have updated the ipod device driver, now itunes freezes when the ipod is plugged in again.

Sounds like hardware failure of somesort. But it’s hard to pin down what without trying running tests. If you can mount the iPod then you can test the hard drive. That’s a good place to start. It may have been slowly failing all this time.
Past that then you’re looking into any number of the electronics, and honestly it might not be worth the time at that point to track down what’s needed to fix it.

Right now the ipod stays in disk mode saying okay to disconnect, or it will tell me to plug it into itunes to restore.

When plugging it in, itunes completely freezes. Also, in my computer, removable disk d (the ipod) freezes whenever i click it. I am unable to do anything with the drive. It does this on multiple computers.

Is there anyway to fix the hardware in the ipod, or is it pretty much dead?

Davey_T said:

Right now the ipod stays in disk mode saying okay to disconnect, or it will tell me to plug it into itunes to restore.

When plugging it in, itunes completely freezes. Also, in my computer, removable disk d (the ipod) freezes whenever i click it. I am unable to do anything with the drive. It does this on multiple computers.

Is there anyway to fix the hardware in the ipod, or is it pretty much dead?

Click to expand...

It's possible. But it's more about is it worth it to do so, especially considering that you have to figure out what the issue is first.
IFixit as an example sells the logic board for the iPod Classic:
https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Guide/572?display=list&filters[Logic+Boards]=on

Or you can go on eBay or iFixit and buy a drive.
https://www.ebay.com/b/ipod-classic-160gb-hard-drive/bn_7024731074

But is that worth it to do is the question? It's probably cheaper, less of a headache, and more expedient to simply buy a working unit off of either eBay, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, or OfferUp.

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EDIT: As another alternative, you could just buy phones with larger memory sizes. That's essentially what I've done. I moved from a 160GB iPod Classic 7th Gen, first to a 6S+ 128GB, and now I'm comfortably on a XR 128GB. I am coming from the place of filling those drives up with audio and even I immediately moved to the convenience of having it all on my phone rather than carrying two devices.

I also have a YouTube Red subscription and I've found as a further step it's just easier to download stuff through the YouTube Music app rather than manage a bunch of audio locally. It also gives me a much larger music library (to say the least). With YouTube music I can pretty much play any song ever and even have access to a lot of specialized audio like live music etc that I can just throw into playlists at a whim.

If you're a hardcore iPod faithful, I doubt my suggestion will sway you at all, but you're talking to a guy that filled up a 160GB iPod Classic and has tons of albums backed up from CD to FLAC for long term archiving as well as a 320kb/s variable mp4 for iPod and local playback. Convenience eventually won out. I would rather spend my time elsewhere on other hobbies rather than getting obsessive over audio library management.

Thank you, I appreciate all your help!

I ended up buying a used ipod classic lol. I hope it works.

Those ipod disks broke constantly when i worked at BBY during college. The fact that any of them are still spinning is amazing to me. I would get something with solid state asap, spinning disks were never intended to be moved around during operation.

Little late, but based off your description, you got a bad HDD in that. You can get the drives swapped out for an SD card. Either DIY or there are a few companies that do it.