Ipod video 5gen 30 gb connects to computer but gets weird error

[Jscap]

First off, I'm new here, so hi, glad to be on the forums, I hope its a nice place.

to start out with my problem, I haven't updated the build in quite a while.
It's ver. r25494-100405
The error I'm getting on my computer is, "F:/ is not acceptable. the semaphore period has expired"

I've tried restarting my computer to see if it was the computer fault. I haven't tried anything else, any help would be highly appreciated thanks.

Oh also, the last ABSOLUTE LAST! thing I would want to do with this, is format it, so if we could avoid that option at all cost that would be lovely, because I have absolutely no way to recover this music collection.

[saratoga]

It's ver. r25494-100405

That build doesn't have USB support, so plugging it into a USB port is probably not going to do what you want.  Try using the Apple firmware. 

[Jscap]

It's been working for about a year and a half now without any problems, why would it stop now? And what else do I plug it into if all it came with is a usb cable?

If you need more info, some of the songs on the last few albums I loaded onto it are having some trouble playing. but thats about it for the information, unless i can look up specs on the devise it's self.

[saratoga]

It's been working for about a year and a half now without any problems, why would it stop now?

I just double checked and it seems releases had USB enabled recently, but SVN builds like yours had it already, so I guess USB should work.  No idea why its not working.

[Jscap]

I'll delete the albums that I put on before this started happening to see if that helps.

EDIT: Tried and no dice.

[[Saint]]

If you need more info, some of the songs on the last few albums I loaded onto it are having some trouble playing.

File System errors can cause a whole host of "fun-to-debug" errors.
Playback issues and refusal to mount are just two of a long list...Have you tried verifying that the FS is free from errors?

You'll need to boot into the Apple FW to do this since it won't mount under Rockbox of course, you can achieve this on your iPod by holding Menu to boot the player from an off state, or by initiating the Hold switch immediately after powering the player on.

Hope this helps...


[St.]

[Jscap]

Have you tried verifying that the FS is free from errors?

uhhh, I'm only a little tech savvy so a small tutorial would be nice. it connected when in ipod firmware but gets the same error when I try to open it through windows.

It is now telling me that I have to format the drive..... is there any ANY way to get around this?

OH, and you said something about file system errors and being able to debug them? How can I do this? will it let me keep my music?

Ok, It might come down to the fact that I can't rescue all my files, but if I could only rescue some of them would that be possible?

[bluebrother]

OH, and you said something about file system errors and being able to debug them? How can I do this? will it let me keep my music?

In Windows, do the following:

- boot the Ipod into the Apple firmware or Emergency Disk Mode (see the IpodFAQ)
- connect it to the PC
- figure the drive letter the Ipod got assigned. Make sure Itunes is not running.
- click Start, then Run. Enter "cmd.exe" (without the quotes). Press Enter.
- type "chkdsk /f X:" (without the quotes, again). Replace X with the drive letter you figured earlier.

This will check the filesystem for errors. Obviously this only works if the filesystem is still recognized by Windows. If you get errors displayed you can tell chkdsk to fix them. This might work or might not, but with filesystem errors you can expect any kind of weird behaviour, so if there are any you should let chkdsk fix them.

[Jscap]

"The type of the file system is RAW. chkdsk is not available for RAW drives."

[AlexP]

So the partition table is corrupted, so Windows doesn't know what type of filesystem it is.  If you are lucky it is only this information and not the actual data so you can use a recovery tool to get the data back.  I can't recommend one, but if you type your error message into google there are thousands of hits.  For reference, your partition type should be fat32.

There is also the question of why - you could have just unplugged it at the wrong time (without safely remove), or it could be failing hardware.

[bluebrother]

So the partition table is corrupted, so Windows doesn't know what type of filesystem it is.  If you are lucky it is only this information and not the actual data so you can use a recovery tool to get the data back.  I can't recommend one, but if you type your error message into google there are thousands of hits.  For reference, your partition type should be fat32.

You *could* try to restore the partition table by dd-ing a matching one from http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/IpodConversionToFAT32 to the disk. However, this can also permanently loose all data, so I would recommend doing this on a raw copy of the complete disk. If you're familiar with Linux you can do this without much work. You could also try to figure the first sector of the data partition of the Ipod and dump from that point into a file, then mount it on Linux. If the filesystem is still readable you should be able to get your data back. If the filesystem itself is corrupted you could try tools like testdisk and various commercial data recovery tools.

[cereal_killer]

Hello Jscap,

I hope you can solve your problem. As bluebrother said try some recovery tools. For transferring your music back to your computer I can suggest you a freeware program called sharepod. If you have rescued your files, then it is not such a problem if you really have to format you player,.

Good luck.

Greetings,

c_k

[dreamlayers]

You can easily create a backup copy of the old partition table before writing a new one.   Then you can easily undo by writing the backup you created.  For example, create the backup using

Code: [Select]

dd if=<iPod disk device> of=ipod_mbr_backup bs=512 count=1

The only danger is writing to the wrong place, or writing the wrong thing and overwriting other data.  Ensure that the text "<iPod disk device>" is replaced with the correct device path, such as "/dev/sdb".  If you write to the wrong drive, you can lose access to data on other drives and even cause your computer to not boot. 

Testdisk is great for undeleting partitions.  If the FAT32 partition is still there, Testdisk can find it and write the proper entry into the partition table.

[Jscap]

Well I did find something earlier called zero assumption recovery, would this work?

[torne]

It's probably nothing to do with the partition table; Windows detects filesystem type by looking for the BPB/superblock/whatever inside the partition, it mostly doesn't care about the types in the MBR. Complaining that it's RAW usually just means the first sector of the partition has gotten destroyed somehow and no longer looks like a FAT BPB.