Did I Brick my iPod Classic?

[jackelliott]

(iPod 5G Classic, Linux Mint 17.3)

Hi,

I've been running Rockbox on my iPod 5G Classic for a year or so, and like it. Last night I thought to try different themes, installed a few, connected and disconnected the USB cable as needed to try stuff. I think I may have disconnected the cable at one point without unmounting the device and it gave me a "PANIC" error. Locked up. On hard reset, it gave the same message. When connected to the computer, it comes up with an "ABORT" message.

In both cases, the error message is followed by additional information, probably referring to a damaged file.

Anyway, I don't mind starting from scratch if I have to. What's my procedure for making things good again -- assuming that I can get the device into a mode where it can be accessed via USB?

[jackelliott]

Wrong forum?

[Frankenpod]

Have you tried the normal procedure for doing a 'restore' with iTunes?

(which would, of course, mean starting again from scratch, but would help clarify if it was a hardware failure or something recoverable)

[gevaerts]

First of all, is it a 5g or a classic?

Assuming it's a 5g (video), you should be able to reset it by holding select ane menu, and then boot it to emergency disk mode by holding select and play while booting. When you're in emergency disk mode, you can check the filesystem or reformat.

(the same may work on a classic, but I'm not familiar with those and I know they're fairly different hardware-wise)

[jackelliott]

Hi Gaeverts, thanks.

My apologies, I had it in my head that any older iPod with a hard drive and click wheel was a "Classic." Wikipedia says "The iPod Classic was a portable media player created and formerly marketed by Apple Inc. There were six generations of the iPod classic, as well as a spin-off (the iPod Photo) that was later re-integrated into the main iPod line." So that's where my confusion comes from.

Anyway, according to serial number lookup services, this is a 5th Gen (w/ video) iPod, Model A1136. It has a 60GB HDD.

Thank you for instructions for putting it into Disk Mode. It shows up in gparted as /dev/sdb, FAT32. (If Windows tools would make it easier to get help here, I can switch over).

The dosfsck tool reports:

Code: [Select]

$ sudo dosfsck -t -a /dev/sdb
fsck.fat 3.0.26 (2014-03-07)
FAT size is zero.

"FAT size is zero" is not reassuring. And that is all dosfsck manages to do.

Okay, another utility: Christophe Grenier's TestDisk 6.14 Data Recovery Utility.

After Deep Scan:

Code: [Select]

Disk /dev/sdb - 60 GB / 55 GiB - CHS 57231 64 32

Warning: the current number of heads per cylinder is 64
but the correct value may be 255.
You can use the Geometry menu to change this value.
It's something to try if
- some partitions are not found by TestDisk
- or the partition table can not be written because partitions overlaps.

I'm in over my head now. Some odd heads/cylinder sizes, but just warnings, not errors.

I'm thinking that the HDD is fine, that I have corrupted some Rockbox data when I disconnected it without unmounting it. So maybe I'm a candidate for a recovery of the iTunes thing then re-install Rockbox?

[saratoga]

I would just restore it, but if you really want, you could try and repair the file system and see what happens.

[jackelliott]

Hi saratoga,

Yeah, probably the simplest thing for me to do is to restore it.

So . . . would my procedure be something like Google "restore iPod" and follow the instructions, which I gather would clean up the disk and make the iPod into a working device under iTunes; then re-install Rockbox?

If that summary is accurate then I'll charge ahead.

[jackelliott]

SOLVED (I think)

Linux's disk checking tools, or the ones I found, were not helpful.

Connected the iPod in Disk Mode to a Windows PC, ran chkdsk /f and chkdsk found

Code: [Select]

Nonvalid long folder entry in \.rockbox\wps ...
The \.rockbox\wps\iCatcher entry contains a nonvalid link.

I chose to not let chkdsk convert the lost chains to files, unmounted the device, rebooted it, and Hey Presto! Rockback is back.

The broken link in the WPS folder makes perfect sense as it was during installing themes to play with that I forgot to unmount the device before disconnecting it.

Thanks all, for the help.

[[Saint]]

In future, force DFU mode, and use iTunes to restore.

iTunes will automatically detect the iPod in DFU mode and offer to restore it. This is the canonical "I dun goofed" restore method assuming the hardware is intact. Freemyipod also offers documentation on manual restore on *nix based hosts.


[Saint]


Edit:

"Classic" is ambiguous I guess, it isn't clear if you actually mean an iPod Classic 6G or a "Classic" iPod, such as the 4G/Color/Photo, 5/5.5G/Video and friends.

Assuming you mean the Classic 6G then either force DFU mode and restore with iTunes or see Freemyipod's documentation on manual restore.

Assuming you mean any one of the other suppoerted iPod models, force Apple Disk Mode and restore with iTunes, or see our documentation on iPod manual restore.