The Death of an IPOD

I encourage any IPOD owner to test their entire disks for bad sectors while your IPOD is still under warranty. In my wifes case, the bad sector was their the entire time, she just had not reached that capacity until recently. Here is how to test your IPOD:

1. Reboot your IPOD by holding down "MENU" and "PLAY/PAUSE".

2. When you see the APPLE LOGO, Hold down these keys until the logo disappears:
"|<<" - Back Button
">>|" - Next Button
"Wheel Button" - Center button on the Wheel

3. Suddenly you will hear a "Defender Fire" like sound and the APPLE will be backwards. You have entered the Apple Diagnostic Toolset

4. Using the Arrow keys scroll down to Option "O . HDD SCAN"

5. Press the "Wheel Button" to start the HDD SCAN and wait 4-10 hours for it to complete. The test will finish, it just takes time considering the size of the disk.

At the end if everything passed you will get a "DISK PASSED" or in our case you will get a "DISK READ FAIL - 0x00000007".

This will exhaustively test your disk for read and write capability. It will not affect the data on the disk, but it will assure you there are no bad sectors lurking on your IPOD ready for you to find when you have filled it up.

We are still waiting on a judgment from APPLE as to repair, if they judge it is out of warranty, we will be forced to buy a new IPOD. It is interesting how the investment in music in Itunes format will lock you into hardware. Standing in the Apple store I was focusing on the bite in the apple rather than the whole of their brand. It is such a cruel irony, you love using this gadgetry, yet when it dies you really feel a loss. Apple has a choice, they can recognize that the sector defect existed when we purchased the IPOD or say we are out of warranty, tough luck.