ipod 5.5 80GB: Damaged hard drive, missing folders.

[reidarstolen]

I may have dropped my ipod in the floor and now I can't find most of the files on it anymore. As I do not have a complete backup of my music (stupid) I would be very glad to get some hints on how to possibly recover some/most/all of my music files.

After I dropped it it would not charge, nor boot into apple or rockbox. The apple boot got to the apple logo screen and cycled through that screen and the very low battery message screen during a few minutes. The rockbox boot started the bootloader, but could not find the file rockbox.ipod and gave me the screen saying:

Code: [Select]

Rockbox boot loader
Version: 1.1
IPOD version oxFFFFFFFF
TOSHIBA MK8010GAH
Partition 1: 0x0B 76183 MB
Loading Rockbox...
Error!
Can't load rockbox.ipod:
File not found
Hold menu+select to reboot
then select+play for disk mode

I finally managed to charge the battery enough to get it into disk mode and found only some of the files and folders (calendars, contacts, ipod_control, podcasts and notes) the .rockbox- and the music-folder where missing. The properties of the disk says that it contains 71GB of data wich is about right including the music, so I am not quite convinced it is completely gone.

So if you have any hints on what to do to recover the files I would be very glad. I am using linux and/or windows, wichever has the best tools to do the job.

Do you think apple would give me a new hard-drive if i send it back?

[zajacattack]

Try running chkdsk or something similar to see if it can fix any problems with the drive.

If that fails, try lettings iTunes restore it, and then re-install rockbox.

[Febs]

Try running chkdsk or something similar to see if it can fix any problems with the drive.

Use the /r option with chkdsk to find and repair disk errors.

If that fails, try lettings iTunes restore it, and then re-install rockbox.

Of course, that would complete wipe his iPod and prevent him from recovering his music, which is exactly what he said he did not want to do.

[reidarstolen]

I ended up using ddrescue in linux because my windows machine didn't have enough disk space to run chkdsk on it The ddrescue managed to read about 50 of the 70GB on the player and stored it as one big image file. I have tried to mount the image (as vfat), but it says it cannot recognise the filesystem. Any other ideas on how to read the files from the image?

Luckily I found a backup of most of my music, so I let iTunes restore it and it seems to work fine for now.

[zajacattack]

Now that it's restored, try running a disk checking utility on it to see if you can prevent this from happening again.

[reidarstolen]

Code: [Select]

C:\>chkdsk E:\
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Volume RPOD created 18.03.2008 18:10
Volume Serial Number is FA2A-D0E4
Windows is verifying files and folders...
File and folder verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
   77 984 064 KB total disk space.
       18 096 KB in 1 109 hidden files.
       21 024 KB in 1 313 folders.
   59 593 840 KB in 12 727 files.
   18 351 088 KB are available.

       16 384 bytes in each allocation unit.
    4 874 004 total allocation units on disk.
    1 146 943 allocation units available on disk.

C:\>

Is this what you meant by a "disk checking utility"? How will this prevent the disk from crashing again?
At least it didn't  find any errors now. Let's hope it means the hard drive hasn't suffered any serious mechanical damage.

[zajacattack]

Yes, that's what I meant.

[dreamlayers]

By default chkdsk only checks filesystem metadata (eg. directories, information which tells where files are located, which areas are free, etc).  It does not read file data or unallocated space and so it doesn't tell you if your data is readable and if the drive is okay.  To have it check everything, specify the /r switch.  That will take a long time.  With a media player it's probably a good idea to make sure the battery is fully charged in case the constant hard drive activity discharges it.