Is everyone else having as much trouble with the iPod Classic 160 as me? What can be done?

November 7, 2007 9:55 AM

Is everyone else having as much trouble with the iPod Classic 160 as me? What can be done?

I have an iPod Classic 160 that I purchased as both a music player and a portable hard drive. I use it to listen to music in my car, and then plug it in to listen through iTunes at work and home (both XP), use Portable Firefox, and store my files.

I'm on my 2nd one now, the first caused iTunes to be horribly slow, crashed frequently while plugged in (sometimes taking the whole computer with it), at first took several attempts to sync a 25 gig music collection without errors, and had to be restored weekly after crashing while plugged i and becoming corrupted. I have identical problems at home and at work.

I got it replaced at the Apple store on Monday, and the new one was working well, crashed once yesterday, and now today has just crashed at work and become corrupted, leaving me with nothing to listen to once again.

I see there are a few posts online about somewhat similar problems with these things, but I can't believe that there isn't more of an outcry about this. The thing is nearly unusable. I know most people simply load it and use it away from a computer, but I would assume enough people use it for purposes similar to mine that these issues would be more talked about.

Can anyone else relate similar problems? Is the third one the charm, or is it time to demand a refund?

posted by bradn to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Have you updated its firmware through iTunes? Mine was really buggy until I updated it. Now it works great.
posted by streetdreams at 10:00 AM on November 7, 2007

Possibly/probably unrelated, but I had inadvertantly plugged an old iPod cable into my computer and was charging my iPhone with it, and had all kinds off weird behavior -- I bring it up because the iPhone clearly has a an incompatibility with older iPod cables & connectors (with some it actually flashes a message saying an incompatible device has been plugged in), and I wonder if Apple changed the port on the new non-touch-iPods as well.

If updating your firmware doesn't fix the problem, maybe do a check on your older cables and see if replacing them with cables that specify compatibility with iPod classic fixes it.
posted by illovich at 10:20 AM on November 7, 2007

Firmware is up to date (1.0.2 i believe).
streetdreams, do you use yours for disk use the way I do?

Thanks, illovich, I hadn't thought about the cable issue. I'm pretty sure I'm using a new one, but it's hard to say since they seem to be identical to the old ones. I'll check when I get home, I still have the cable from my replacement in the package.
posted by bradn at 11:12 AM on November 7, 2007

I use my (old 30gb) drive pretty much the way you describe: it's all my work first, and a music player second. I think this is a pretty common thing for those of us with the "big" iPods.

That said, I have had disconnect and data problems using anything other than genuine Apple USB cables. I feel silly saying that, since I know it's just a damn wire, but the problems only arise for me with the $1.99 versions.
posted by rokusan at 11:47 AM on November 7, 2007

Yeah, I have mine enabled for disk use with about 60 gigs of various backed up crap on it. I also use iPod and iPhone cables interchangeably and have never had a problem with that.

Is it possible that your iTunes library file or certain files on your iPod disk are corrupted and causing the problem? I went through a series of 4g iPods before figuring out that corrupt data files were crapping it out. Have you tried repairing disk permissions?
posted by streetdreams at 11:51 AM on November 7, 2007

I had iTunes interface problems with my 160 G Classic (and only that particular iPod) until I upgraded iTunes to 7.5.02.0 - now it works much better. Not perfect, but iTunes doesn't freeze up like it did.
posted by DandyRandy at 12:38 PM on November 7, 2007

This might be a dumb question but - you're using a USB 2.0 connection for it, right? I was having awful trouble with my 160G Classic until I finally read the directions(!) and realised what was going on. Installed a USB 2.0 connection, upgraded iTunes and firmware to the latest versions, and now it works like a charm.
posted by different at 12:46 PM on November 7, 2007

This probably wouldn't account for all of your problems, but iTunes is very dumb about drive letter control. If you have any network drives mapped in XP, chances are iTunes will freak out and claim any number of falsehoods about your iPod, including that it isn't connected, or that it's connected but is corrupted and needs restored.

If this might be the case, open up Disk Management in XP (Start > Run > "diskmgmt.msc") while the iPod is plugged in. Right click on the drive entry for the iPod (160GB) and force it to use an open drive letter, like "P" for "Pod", or any other letter that isn't taken up by a mapped network drive/partition/external hard drive/card reader.

Then open iTunes and it should see it and work happily. I had this problem for awhile and until I figured out what was going on I thought my 160GB Classic was on the fritz.

Also, mine works much, MUCH better with the 1.0.2 firmware. I know you said yours is updated but you might just want to stick it out for another release - it seems each firmware update fixes more and more people's issues.
posted by sprocket87 at 1:53 PM on November 7, 2007

I'm pretty sure there is no corrupt data that I am loading on the iPod, my iTunes library works fine normally, and every else seems ok. What's the PC equivalent of repairing disk permissions - chkdsk?
And yes, USB 2.0
posted by bradn at 1:55 PM on November 7, 2007

Update - After a full restore, I am now using the cable that came with the iPod, it's the second day and I haven't had a single problem. Not much lagging of iTunes, no crashes and it ejects much quicker than it has been.
Guess that was the problem. Now I have to figure out which of my several iPod cables is the other new one.
posted by bradn at 11:53 AM on November 9, 2007

Still not done with this.

It seems to work pretty well, except the crashes are still there. They appear to be a once a day occurance. The iPod clicks, any applications on the iPod and iTunes freeze, and I get the "Wrong Volume" error. Everything stays that way for 10 minutes or so and then the computer restarts, no warning. there seems to be no way to recover other than restarting or pulling the iPod, which is how I corrupted it last time.

I found this post with a similar problem: http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?t=207288&page=10
posted by bradn at 8:16 AM on November 12, 2007