iPod Nano 1st Gen: damaged filesystem

[benanne]

So, a while ago, I attached my iPod to my PC to throw some new music onto it. I'm a Linux user, and on my iPod I've been using Rockbox ever since I got it, a little over three years ago.

In my logs, I noticed that something weird was going on: I saw occasional I/O and FAT errors popping up. Unfortunately it didn't occur to me to write them down or save them, but there were two numbers in there that always recurred; I figured two sectors were damaged, or something.

Then, I noticed that I couldn't put any new music on it. The copying would always fail. Other than that it still worked fine though, so I didn't pay much attention to it and I thought I'd take a look at this problem some other time.

Eventually, however, it crashed pretty badly. It would no longer boot, not even respond to the reset button combination (MENU+SELECT). When I attached it to my PC it would constantly power up and reboot, in an endless loop.

With some help from the people in #rockbox, I managed to get it to boot into disk mode yesterday, and let it recharge. Now I can get it to boot into the old firmware, as well. When I attempt to boot it into rockbox, I get the dreaded "Error! Can't load rockbox.ipod: File not found" message.

Today, I decided to take a closer look at this mess. I let it boot into disk mode and attached it to my PC. Then I did this:

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[sander@arch ~]$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sde2 /mnt/temp
[sander@arch ~]$ cd /mnt/temp/
[sander@arch temp]$ ls -Alh
totaal 4,0K
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    0 jan 15  2004 a?@?
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3,0K mei  6  1992 b?jt??.ll?
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    0 jul  4  2006 h@e@\b??That... doesn't look too good

My guess is that this is just the original problem escalating into something much worse.

My logs are now sprinkled with this type of error:

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Jul 14 18:34:54 arch kernel: sd 13:0:0:0: [sde] Unhandled sense code
Jul 14 18:34:54 arch kernel: sd 13:0:0:0: [sde] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
Jul 14 18:34:54 arch kernel: sd 13:0:0:0: [sde] Sense Key : 0x3 [current]
Jul 14 18:34:54 arch kernel: Info fld=0x0
Jul 14 18:34:54 arch kernel: sd 13:0:0:0: [sde] ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0
Jul 14 18:34:54 arch kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 175952
The sector numbers in the last line always seem to be in the 175xxx or 160xxx range, but a lot of different ones occur.


I have a few questions about this. The most important one is: can I do anything to fix this? Or should I just get another MP3 player. I'm just a poor student, rather short on cash at the moment, so it would be quite awesome if I could use this one for another while.

Also, what is the nature of this issue? If it's hardware related, I reckon I might as well just toss it in the bin right away. If it's a software problem, resetting the iPod through iTunes and then reinstalling rockbox should do the trick, right?
I might as well try this, it doesn't seem like it could do any more damage. I'd have to install iTunes though... yuck

I have no idea how this came about, as far as I recall I didn't drop it or abruptly disconnect it, or anything. The matter is complicated by the fact that this is a flash memory player; most information I find about this kind of problem is only applicable to hard drives. Maybe the flash memory is just dying of old age, I don't know.



Can anybody shed some light on this? Maybe even point me in the right direction to get it working again? It would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

[soap]

http://bashcurescancer.com/man/cmd/fsck.vfat ?

[benanne]

I figured it was worth a shot
but it doesn't look good...

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[sander@arch films]$ fsck.vfat -v /dev/sde2
dosfsck 3.0.1 (23 Nov 2008)
dosfsck 3.0.1, 23 Nov 2008, FAT32, LFN
Checking we can access the last sector of the filesystem
Boot sector contents:
System ID "*UOKJIHC"
Media byte 0xf8 (hard disk)
       512 bytes per logical sector
      4096 bytes per cluster
        32 reserved sectors
First FAT starts at byte 16384 (sector 32)
         2 FATs, 32 bit entries
   3907584 bytes per FAT (= 7632 sectors)
Root directory start at cluster 2 (arbitrary size)
Data area starts at byte 7831552 (sector 15296)
    976044 data clusters (3997876224 bytes)
63 sectors/track, 255 heads
    160656 hidden sectors
   7823649 sectors total
Read 3904184 bytes at 16384:Input/output error

when I run this command, the log displays:

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Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: sd 14:0:0:0: [sde] Unhandled sense code
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: sd 14:0:0:0: [sde] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: sd 14:0:0:0: [sde] Sense Key : 0x3 [current]
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: Info fld=0x0
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: sd 14:0:0:0: [sde] ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 160688
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: __ratelimit: 118 callbacks suppressed
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sde2, logical block 32
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sde2, logical block 33
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sde2, logical block 34
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sde2, logical block 35
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sde2, logical block 36
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sde2, logical block 37
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sde2, logical block 38
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sde2, logical block 39
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sde2, logical block 40
Jul 15 00:25:48 arch kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sde2, logical block 41
I'm losing hope
Thanks for the suggestion though
Should I try running with with the -a switch as well (e.g. automatic repair)?


I haven't tried the iTunes reset thing yet, I will report back when I have.
Although maybe I should try reformatting /dev/sde2 first, I'm not sure.

[soap]

Yes - run every repair switch god gives you! 

No use reformatting or iTunes restoring until the filesystem corruption is fixed.

[macgeek417]

Doesn't restoring reformat it? Wouldn't that fix fs corruption?

[soap]

Ya know, the more I think about it the more I think you're right:  Reformatting should be enough if it is simply filesystem corruption and not media failure.