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Simple Fix To iPod Madness?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the what-you-might-call-counterintuitive dept.

doce writes "After chunking my seemingly dead iPod off my balcony while reviewing a rubberized case, the darned thing started working again, though not quite perfectly. After taking it apart, I managed to fix it properly just by reseating the hard drive cable. Could this be the cause of all the click-of-death "sad iPod" failures users are seeing?"

11 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe by wan-fu · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe.

    1. Re:Maybe by Mr_Tulip · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or maybe not.

    2. Re:Maybe by idonthack · · Score: 4, Funny

      Is it free karma day?

      --
      Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
    3. Re:Maybe by splodger75 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Maybe

  2. Ummmm... by Solra+Bizna · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hey, you've got something here! Maybe ALL broken Macintoshes can be fixed this way too!!

    -:sigma.SB

    --
    WARN
    THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
  3. good to see... by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well, good to see that he tried throwing it off a balcony before he tried taking it apart to see what the problem was...

    --
    This guy's the limit!
    1. Re:good to see... by joe+155 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      it is a general rule that if something doesn't work right away you should hit it as hard as you can, the whole balcony thing is just the logical conclusion of that same idea.

      --
      *''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
  4. First Law Of Electrical Engineering by MountainLogic · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is it plugged in?????

  5. This seems highly likely, at least in some cases. by tobias.sargeant · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've had my (4th gen) iPod reach click-of-death stage twice, and both times I've been able to resurrect it by opening the case, and reseating the drive cable. The second time, it seemed to me that the problem was actually the zif socket at the drive end of the cable, which was displaced on one side by about .5mm. I think the key to knowing whether this is the problem is to put your iPod into test mode, and look at the smart data. If you see lots of retracts, but no reallocs, then (my hypothesis is that) the hard drive isn't dying, it's just being reset a lot (which involves retracting the heads, and hence the audible click), due to transfer errors as a result of the flaky cable connection.

  6. Similar iBook Problem by SinGunner · · Score: 4, Interesting
    My iBook was dying last year (it was only 14 months old), but I hit it once (out of frustration, I'm weak) and the damn thing started working great. About a month later, the same thing started happening, so this time I decided to take it apart to figure out what was wrong (never try this. it's easier to open the damn box from Hellraiser). I found that all the connectors in the entire iBook are inserted parallel to their respective cards/boards. I thought this was genius, as it would keep cords from wiggling loose from picking it up and putting it down as is the constant state of a laptop. I then got to the only cable in the whole damn thing that is placed perpendicular to the motherboard: the hard drive cable. It's basically designed to come out. The cable comes up from underneath and connects to the motherboard. Obviously the engineers saw the intelligence in connecting all the other cables the way they were, so why not this one? Hell, the hard drive cable is secured with plain ol' tape. That's how bad it is. I really couldn't believe it. I figured out the reason for this design flaw when I took it to the Mac store. I explained exactly what was wrong and that I simply wanted them to take the time to take it apart and resecure the cable this time (because I just don't have the time or patience to do it again) and they quoted me 450 dollars to fix it. I tried to explain that nothing was wrong with the damn thing, but their amazing technical genius (they didn't even look at the damn thing other than to plug in a USB cord and say it seemed like they could see the drive, which is plausible) quoted their base price to fix a "broken" iBook.

    Suffice to say, I'm planning on building a Linux box for my next computer. I guess it was a lesson learned. Mr. Jobs had me at "hello", but he lost me at "450 [goddamn] dollars".

  7. Pick it up about three inches off a table... by Howard+Beale · · Score: 5, Funny

    and drop it.

    Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were talking about an Apple III....