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My brother Justin loved his 20 gig 4th generation ipod until he dropped it at the gym one day. It stopped working all together and would make clicking noises when he would try to start it.
He had gotten it as a gift and didnt have the reciept for it, so he couldnt take it back unter warrenty I guess. Apple said that it would cost $250 to fix. Instead of fixing it, he spend the money on
a 30 gig 5th generation. I asked him for the broken ipod so I could tinker with it. After I got it from him, I decided that it would be cool to own an ipod, and that if i could fix it for less then the
retail price, I would be a head of the game. I documented my adventure of trying to fix my ipod, check it out.
- When I would start the ipod, I would get an icon of a folder and a warning sign. The ipod would then make a bunch of clicking noises. That make me think that the hard drive was crapped out.
- Since it was already broken, why not take it apart and try to make it work. There was no clear way to ebter the ipod, so I decided to pry off the metal back using the thinnest screw driver I could find.
It wasnt that hard to work the screw drive between the metal and the plastic. I worked the screw driver down the side of the case, until it popped off.
- I flipped the ipod over, and opened it up slowly, I noticed that there was a ribbon cable connecting the guts if the ipod to the jacks mounted to the metal back. I was careful not to mess this connection up.
- The ipod uses an ide harddrive, the connector pulled directly off without any problems. I now hard the bad harddrive free,
- The drive had blue rubber bumpers wrapped around it, and on the back, there was a foam mat that was glued to the drive.
- Removing the bumpers was no problem, they pulled directly off with out any fight.
- I tried to pull the foam off the drive by pulling on it, but that wasnt working, so I desided to get a razor blade scraper and screape it off. It worked well.
- Once I had the foam off, I could see that it was a toshiba drive. Model MK2004GAL. I looke dofr replacements online, but was only able to find the model MK2006GAL. I compared the MK2004GAL and the MK2006GAL, and didnt see any big differences, so I ordered one. 3 days letter I had my new drive. It didnt have the apple logo on it, but who cares, it was only $100!
- The blue bumpers went on with out a problem, and fit like a glove.
- To get the foam to stick to the new drive, I went super ghetto and reached in my desk, and came up with a glue stick! Hey, it goet the job done.
- The new drive went in, just like the old one came out. I connected the IDE connection, and I was ready to close it up.
- I put the back on, and pressed down on it evenly. The back snapped without any problems.
- Next, I downloaded the ipod updater (11-17-2005) from apple.com, and installed it. I hooked up my newly rebuilt ipod, and did a restore. It went really fast.
- After the restore, I had to hook up my ipod to the wall charger. I didnt have one on hand so i tried all kinds of methods of going around it. In the middle of me trying to hack around it, My buddy chris called, I told him to bring over his wall charger.
- 5 minutes later Chris showed up with a charger. I plugged in the ipod, it reset itself, and then I was up and running with my newly rebuilt ipod.
I was really supprised at how easy it was to replace the hard drive in a 4th gen ipod. Im sure that someone is going to call me an idiot for opening the case that way. I dont care though. I got this thing working and that all that matters, and I did it for under $100. Screw apple for wanting to charge $250 for 20 munites worth of work and $100 worth of parts.
I hope that through my experience, someone else can bring back to life one of their dead ipods.
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hey, I’ve got a minor expiriment going on, wondering if you can put attach large drive, like 120 gb or so to it? Not necessarily fit it in the case, because I’m planning to have it sit under the dashboard in my car… Any idea’s on how to do it?
Also… for the above post, it isn’t turning on because the battery is dead, I’m thinking the connector where you plug it in to charge it is broken… not sure how to fix that problem, and suggestions?
my i-pod is frozen and i think its cuz 2 or 3 of the bronze or copper needle things r brocken off of the ribbon that u connect the hardrive to.
is there a place to get just the ribbon?
suarez_j15@yahoo.com
thank you Stan. I am now a happy slapper!!!
My ipod photo has been dead for months, the hard drive had packed in. Should have googled about it long before now, but saw this great blog and saw the smacking comments and thought ‘what the heck’. I held it about waist height then dropped it on the carpet, no life. Gave it a couple of slaps with the palm of my hand and dropped it again.
Holy crap, it’s working! Dunno how long it will last but happy days for now anyway…
you beauty… just gave the puppy a slap and we’re back in business…
great guide. tried a few times to get the baby apart before giving up worried that i’d sever a cabel. the ribbon cabel just need reseating. once again great guide many thanks for breathing new life in to my old ipod
Many thanks to “bigby” (post 520) and daidupso (don’t remember the post). We got a replacement drive for my daughter’s ipod, but it wouldn’t restore – after reading the posts, we figured it had to be because she was trying to do this on a Mac …. she popped it into our PC, and away it went – restored right away. Thanks, Josh, for the amazing pics and starting this blog!
lol my ipod had the sa face icon too, i have the 20g classic one and it hadnt worked for months so i dug it out to try fix it but still nothing, i started to read about how to fix it following this guide, on reading the first step i started to open the side of the ipod with a standard butter knife and by the time i got hald way down the case it started working!! i love it!
pete, same thing happened to me just a few minutes ago… darn thing showed a sad face, I opened it, and must have clicked a button in the process, it booted perfectly!
the now “not so darn thing” is a 4th gen iPod with a whopping 20GB’s worth on the HD.
Hey there,
Anybody else experienced a loss of HD storage capacity after opening up the ipod and disconnect then reconnect the HD?
My 60 gigs ipod photo had the same symptoms everybody is discussing here. After opening it up and doing the connector trick, it’s back to working BUT it says it’s 16 gigs
of drive capacity now…which is not really doing it for me :-/
Anybody else in the same situation? Any tips or advice on hoz to fix that?
Is the drive really damaged?
Thanks a lot for any help.
Thanks buddy I have a 3rd gen ipod and not got the icon you had but I have a disk that is no longer making any noise, going to open it up tonight.
Your insructions have given me the confidence to go ahead and not write off the ipod just yet.
I appreciated the photos too.
Sorry for me english…
But big THX for you blog… You saved me & my pod20G…
Reborn again… YeaaAAAaaah ^^
Thanks for the photos! I didn’t actually need to replace the hard drive, but I couldn’t even figure out how to get the thing cracked open (to put a business card inside for additional pressure on the hard drive) so your images really helped.
Update: My iPod has worked flawlessly since the last post in January 2008. Unfortunately, last week the iPod refused to one day and gave the sad iPod icon. Several attempts to reset failed. I opened the case, disconnected the cable from the HDD, inspected the cable contacts and other iPod innards (all were fine), and reconnected everything. The iPod has worked fine since.
My iPod 3G HD died too. It was a Windows formatted one. I bought A-Data 16 Gb Compact Flash and an adapter from ebay. The adapter from China did not work but the one from HK did. Go figure. I had to put the 3G in USB disk mode, reformat on my Mac using the utility to format disk. I used HFS Extended Journaled, no OS9. It took a few seconds then I rebooted the iPod, restored the iPod and voila. It works fine on my 3G, but I much prefere my 2G as I get MUCH more battery life, so next will be the HD swap in between iPods.
ok ok let me see… if i open mi ipod…by myself… where i can find the hard drive brand new…? im in dolores hidalgo mexico zip code. 37800 please give me some places where i can find it thankss and please answer to muy email… brucebanner@hotmail.com
just did it and it worked perfect.They wanted 250 bucks. I almost threw it in the garbage can outside of apple when I thought I would look it up on ebay an see if someone wanted it for parts.
I got the H/D for 30 bucks. Word of advice : you need to be a little aggressive prying the cover off and be careful of stabbing your hand.
It’s on there pretty tight.
Thank you very much! I used this guide to replace my battery, which after charging I could only use for 1 hour and then it would die. I got a replacement battery from ebay for £5 and it is now lasting as long as when I first bought it!
Thanks for the tips. I just was at Best Buy who replaced the hard drive for the second time. It was out of the 90 day warrenty by two weeks and two days so I was SOL.
I tried the slide switch tip and the smack and it is now back to life.
THANKS for the great advice. Now to try it on my sons 40 Gig that crapped out too.
Not my real email, just seeing if I can add…. I had those little folder icons before and the sad frowny face too… This really works, and has worked over 5 times for me with two different ipods… Take your ipod vertically, portside down. Slam it on a hard surface. Tada, works.
Just to add useful info to this: I was pretty sure my hard drive on the same model of ipod had crapped out on me. One day in my car it just stopped playing for no particular reason. It showed an empty library, so I was sure it got erased. There was no clicking when I plugged it in, but I did see the folder exclamation icon. It would have been a good run anyway. I opened it up for kicks and basically disassembled everything, then put it back together. When I hooked the drive back in it not only began to work, but I found it still had everything stored. I was surprised and psyched. The connections had seemed fine when I opened it, but the troubleshoot was well worth it as it was absolutely free. It did have some sand in there that I cleaned out so maybe that was it. Good luck!
Just want to thank you for this Blog. I have a 4th Gen iPod and have had to replace the battery about a year ago and recently have been getting all the warning signs that the hard drive was failing. A note to all the smackers. It does work but is a temporary fix but your drive WILL eventually fail. I actually found a replacement 20 GB drive for $30 with shipping it came out to $37.82 and I recieved it in two days after placing my order (yes they have the 30GB for like $20 bucks more. For less than $40 bucks I have my iPod back. Thanks.
I am trying right now. the first try didn’t work out, now i’m on my second try… my ipod’s just too damn old and broken. maybe it will work out, maybe, i hope so!
but hey – your instructions are really, really good.
Thank you. wish I read this sooner. Well done and thank you for sharing. My drive too made grinding noises. It was completely bust and the screen gave me the same error as yours. So I knew that it was well beyond a software issue.
I removed the case with a knife, and, if you can believe it, those little yellow corn skewers (to hold the plastic back while I ran the knife around the edge). I wouldn’t recommend this because I could have cut the wires between the two halves of the iPod. Once the plastic half was off I just jiggled the HD and the whole thing sprang to life. I’m sure it’s a temporary fix but I’m still happy. The thing was 100% dead. I wasn’t even getting the sad face anymore.
Well. I’ll be on that next, HD is ordered already… wonder if anyone tried to put a bigger Drive in a 4th Gen yet? could have bought a 120G for 250$, but rather save my old one for nostalgic reasons. Thanx for the Blog anyway!!
Wow, thanks a lot for the happy slapping method, worked like a charm. I’m still going to replace my 30GB hard drive as it is only $50 and it’s on its way downhill anyway. I’ve had it for four years and I’ve been using it for 4-10 hours daily during that time. Personally, I’m amazed it’s lasted this long.
Anyway, I bought it from pricegrabber.com. They have amazing prices, check ‘em out.
Josh,
You da man! Worked like a charm on my 40GB iPod
I got a 40gig hdd off ebay for $81 AUD (inc postage) and followed your instructions to the letter, and i am now i have a fully operational ipod. Thank you SO MUCH for this guide.
xx
Slap that B***h!
Am an owner of 60gb Photo iPod with a recently replaced aftermarket battery. The unit kept resetting itself and would only recharge via the car charger but refused to be recognized by my IBM PC Win XP-pro computer.
Reluctantly had been shopping retail and common auction sites. Marriage and finance could not withstand the cost of a new 160, 120 or 80gb Classic iPod. Anguished thoughts of going Zune were not a financial headfake.
I finally noticed that ebay included someone offering “guaranteed” results for $10 or best offer. So I took some of his key words and popped them into a Google.com/Copernic.com search and came up with this blog. Within seconds of trying the method I was back to listening to my “Pod”! My choice was to slap the unit flatly and firmly against my thigh.
BAM! I am back in action.
CAUTION: I agree with the caution to gradually increase the methods and surfaces against any iPod user should smack their iPod. Try the thigh. then the phone book, then the note pad and then get out the Glock. LOL.
Thanks, so much.
” Years ago I had to change the battery the first time. This time I had to change both the hard drive and the battery. It was a great help, even though I don’t have the wall charger anymore…. but I’ll figure something out!” Thanks a lot
Yeah… I’ve used the iPod ram method for the past two years to keep my ipod going strong…
http://www.spillingcoffee.com/2006/07/13/how-to-fix-an-ipod-with-the-sad-ipod-icon/
-Tom
I have an Ipod 1st gen with 4 gig HD in it, brought a 20 gig HD from toshiba without apple logo: unable to install file and ! on the screen.
I have tried disk utility, terminal with pdisk. this site solution did not work as I am a mac user and there is no Ipod updater 17 11 2005 for mac!
Stuck with the new Toshiba MK2004GAL without Aplle logo.
Any help ?
Thierry
OMG!!! Hold and slap!!! IT IS ALIIIIVE!!!
I’m really glad that I found this post. I have a 20 GB 4th Gen B&W iPod. It has had a remarkably good lifespan (despite people telling me that the battery gives out after about a year or two). However, it started acting up, freezing and such because of a loose harddrive cable. That was fixed and all. About a year later, the little folder icon shows up.
I opened it up and the cable is fine. I start it up and I can hear the harddrive spinning up. The icon comes up and the hardrive just shuts down. iTunes sees it as a generic iPod (who knew that actually exists…), but doesn’t list any information about it. Disk Utility tells me that I have a 2 TB Apple harddrive hooked up to the computer (Wow! 2 TB in an iPod!) but lists no partition.
I’m not sure if it’s the hardrive that’s the problem, although I suspect it is, or if it is the chipset. The harddrive doesn’t seem “dead”, since it still spins up and everything. It just seems like the iPod’s logic board isn’t reading anything off of the harddrive. Any advice, guys (and gals)?
Slapping is alive and well.
Given that I had a doorstop and nothing to lose I slapped it like I was playing Jeopardy.
It…is…alive!
ok, here’s one for ya. I have an 80gb classic that had been working fine until………
I decided to copy all the mp3′s off the ipod onto my laptop (around 10000 tracks), reason being that because of the way I store my mp3′s on my main computer (over 100,000 mp3′s, file names that don’t contain track number) my ipod would play album tracks in alphabetical order instead of track order (fine for most albums but damned annoying for the likes of pink floyd’s “the wall” et al). My plan was to let the laptop itunes organise my music then reinstall them in my ipod with altered track names thereby playing them in track number order. After spending a couple of hours dragging all the tracks from my ipod (why didn’t somebody tell me there were programs to do this automatically?) and letting laptop itunes rename all the tracks, I went to reload them back onto my ipod but as soon as I passed around 4000, the ipod went wack, I got a message saying that device could not be read or written to, itunes (and my laptop) froze bigtime, and I had to do a crash restart on my laptop. I’ve restored the ipod 4 or 5 times, ran disc error check, even tried to reformat it on a win2k computer I have (XP doesn’t allow reformatting in fat32), but nothing seems to work. I’m not getting any error messages on the ipod such as sad face etc, problem is not just the laptop, it does the same thing on all my computers, it’s not making any suss noises or clicks, it appears to be absolutely ok except I can’t seem to load any more than 4000 tracks. Anybody had a similar problem or know how to fix it? I don’t really want to shell out for a new one, I’m happy to replace the HD if it is buggered but want to confirm it is the problem first, any help or advice will be greatly appreciated.
oops, forgot to mention, I did drop it once or twice, but it was in a protective case although not shock proof. it was working fine, as I said, until I decided to unload/reload tracks to it, is it possible that I damaged the HD? I tried to reformat using win2k to fat32, thinking that if I damaged the disc surface this might remedy the situation but got a message saying “volume size is too big”. I know there’s prolly an easy fix to this but don’t know enough about disc managment to override, what would happen if I put a partition on the drive?
I was almost going to replace my HD and had already tried and tested the “slap technique” – which failed. The thing that worked for me that didn’t involve any unnecessary physical procedures was to DOWNgrade the firmware. I was told from an apple refurb place that it was the HDD that failed. They were wrong!
I was reading the above story. And a bit sceptical about the ipod smacking trick.
But the ipod wasn’t working anymore and i had nothing to loose I grapped a package of tissues so the bang wouldn’t get the case banged up.. and smacked it to the table (with tissues between table and Ipod)..
I was really suprised that it worked! So people who are scaptical as me.. is’t worth giving it a try.. I hit it on the left side….
OMG!
Who said hitting electronics didn’t work when their pissing about.
I had the sad face icon and though my ipod was probably dead (got it off ebay 2nd hand so should have expected it to be broken).
1 hit it the back: no change…
5 proper smacks to the back and one to each side: we’re up and running.
High five to tough love! Cheers guys!
Great Work Lad…
Seldom I write comments but resource really cool
thanks a million, this was great info, i was going to s-can one and ended up fixing it thanks to you!!!
great tutorial! is there any way to take one hard drive out of a classic ipod and put it in an ipod touch?
thanks i just got an ipod for free and it is doing the same thing but i found hard drives for about $20 im going to try this
I bought an mk2004gal and have jumped through every command-line hoop to get this thing to working with my 10gb 2nd gen iPod (even bought a usb enclosure) and no dice. The drive seems to work fine via usb, but only clicks incessantly when attempting to mount with the firewire-only iPod.
It is recognized as an iPod in iTunes, but gives the error that the drive has files in use by another application when trying to restore. It also gives me n/a for the software (firmware) version… even after dd-ing the 10gb firmware to the new drives 2nd partition.
If someone has the secret please let me know, because for the money and time I’ve invested I could have bought a 20gb iPod on eBay.
This was really helpful! However, in the future, you should by a hard drive off ebay. Much cheaper- I got mine for $30.
worked thank you for your help
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