My 40 GB (4th Gen) iPod is D.O.A. (WOE! RENDING OF GARMENTS!) Anyone ever fixed one?

4/1/06 | Marty F

[martin_fierro]

Wellllp, my 40 GB 4th gen iPod took a header off a tabletop the other night. "WHAP!" it said, as it hit the floor.

Long story short, the hard drive is now well and truly hosed. Read/write heads are stuck on a bad sector and the drive can't be reformatted.

While I've seen some sites out there that walk you through replacing your own hard drive, I wanted to ask FReepers if they've had any experiences in this area -- and what their experiences were.

[SamAdams76]

Use this as an opportunity to get a 5th Gen iPod. You won't regret it. The new iPods blow the 4th Gen ones away.

[PJ-Comix]

Okay what kind of rum were you drinking when this happened? When my 19" TV set crashed to the floor while I was moving my TV stand, I was slugging down Flor De Cana.

[martin_fierro]

LOL

Sorry, I don't even have *that* excuse.

Was sober as a judge (tho jetlagged).

[Obadiah]

Same thing happened to me. Mine was in a protective case and as I was washing my car it fell out of my pocket onto my driveway. Hard drive was scrambled. I used used these guys I can wholheartedly recommend them. They did a nice job. They put in a 40gb hard drive to replace my 30gb, plus they replaced my battery. I think the whole thing cost me about $210.00 about 18 months ago. Not sure what the cost might be today. Good luck.

[martin_fierro]

As noted a few days ago, neither Apple nor HP were giving me any love when it came to replacing the crashed hard drive on my 40GB 4th Gen HP iPod. The unit was out of warranty, and the best either would do was to offer to sell me a completely new unit at $318.

So I did a little online research, found two excellent sites [1|2] that describe the iPod HD replacement process, and decided to make the repairs myself.

What follows is my own experience. YOUR RESULTS MAY VARY.

Back cover of my iPod. Note: When a computer product is sold by two competing companies, and something goes wrong with it, neither one of them will fix it.

My handy-dandy Leatherman pliers, screwdriver and knife

Removing the back cover. Using a flat head screwdriver, gently loosen the steel back plate from the white front piece. Then separate the drive from the connecting IDE pins. Note that the connector will only easily connect with the hard drive in one way.

Separate the hard drive from the iPod unit.

Hard drive removed. I'm told that one should be careful with the kapton flex flat cables (the flat translucent brown things indicated by the arrows), which are actually flexible circuit boards. The metal traces inside them, particularly where they flex or change width are prone to breakage and it's difficult to tell that they're broken.

"Top side" of the hard drive.

It has a hard white plastic collar that removes easily. Hold onto it for later.

"Bottom side" of the hard drive. Note the blue foam padding and blue rubber bumpers.

The blue rubber bumpers are easily removed. Note that they have a "bumpier" side and a "smoother" side. The "bumpier" side will face you when you look at the "bottom side" as you reattach them later.

The soft blue foam padding is easily removed with a pocket knife or straight-edge boxcutter.

The 4th Generation iPod 40GB hard drive with all padding removed. Note that the product number "MK4004GAH" indicates drive capacity ("40") and year of manufacture ("04"), and that this number may have changed when you want to buy a new drive.

Old and new drives. The new drive's model number is now "MK4006GAH". I got it from the nice people at eWiz. I've also read that you can put in a 60GB drive (MK6006GAH) in place of the 40GB drive, but I didn't want to chance that yet.

To reassemble, just reverse the above instructions. I used a glue stick to reattach the blue foam padding to the "bottom side" of the hard drive.

According to fred_d,

"Once youve upgraded the drive, you will need to simply run disk mode (3rd and 4th gen hold down |<< and >>| as soon as you see the Apple logo), connect to the pc (you should see it come up as an external drive in my computer) and then run the iPod updater which is a free download off the Apple website. This will format the disk and load the software.

"After this just reboot the iPod (hold menu and play for 3rd gen, select and menu 4th gen) and plug in. n.b. if it says do not disconnect, DONT disconnect it. When its clearly not in use by the computer any more (not updating etc) right click on the safely remove hardware icon and click on it.

"Turn the iPod back on, plug it into iTunes and you should be good to go!"

fred_d was right! It worked just fine for me. Was able to have 400+ CDs worth of music reloaded onto the drive within an hour.

Total cost: about $140 (with tax & S&H) for the hard drive, plus about 45 minutes total deconstruct/reconstruct time.

[tubebender]

Way to go MF!!! I'm sure you will be called on in the future to provide a link to this fix...

[freedumb2003]

Wellllp, my 40 GB 4th gen iPod took a header off a tabletop the other night. "WHAP!" it said, as it hit the floor.

Someone hit your iPod with a lead-filled snowshoe?

[Obadiah]

Great post. Although now I realize I could have saved myself some cash by doing it myself!

[freedumb2003]

That is no less than a public service, Martin.

Thanks for watching out for your FRiends :)

[NELSON111]

Serves you right for buying trendy crap.

Yeah, Mozart and Bon Jovi sound just fine when I spin my 45's while jogging...

Oh Wait...

[JRios1968]

Great job! Of course, this guy would have used some coffee grounds, a rubber band, an old gym sock and a little bit of unleaded gas to achieve the same results!

"You Amateur..."

[CJ Wolf]

This works too.

[backhoe]

martin, knowing you, I half expected the last photo to be a pile of scrap with a funny caption... but since it is a real fix, I'll add it here:

Browser Wars, take two
various FR links | 12-22-04 | The Heavy Equipment Guy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1306815/posts

I go back to the era of soldering coppers, vacuum tubes, and slide rules, but I'm always interested in this new-fangled technology. Jeez, what a tiny HD... still got my first, 20 meg HD in a box somewhere... fit a 5 1/4 drive bay. Barely, it was so big.

[martin_fierro]

still got my first, 20 meg HD in a box somewhere... fit a 5 1/4 drive bay. Barely, it was so big.

Betcha it cost a couple of grand, too.

[domenad]

My first mp3 was a Creative Nomad, which I later followed up with the Nomad II. It was a badass unit, took absolutely everything I could throw at it. Drop it, kick it, whatever, never had so much as a glitch. After I went to a hard drive MP3 player, I picked the Rio Karma. Big mistake. If your Mp3 player won't boot up, put it to your ear. If you hear "clickclickclickclick" it's finished. From there I went to an Iriver H120, which is still my current player. It died once 2 months before the warranty expired, they sent me a new one. Next for me is the Creative Vision:M. I owned a 30GB Ipod, hated it, sold it for a real loss.