HEXUS.lifestyle - Digital Home buying advice, help, news and entertainment

iPod click o'death free fix

Consumer electronics

Published: Thursday 1st June, 2006 | Author: Bob Crabtree

printer friendly layout discuss this review in the forums

discuss in the forums email this review to a friend

email to a friend

If you've got a fourth-gen iPod that's been laid low by the dreaded hard-disk click of death, you might end up wanting to say a thank-you to JC over at mac geekery. He's come up with a possible free cure, though only after lobbing his iPod from a third-floor window! Fortunately multi-storey drop-tests aren't part of his recommended fix.

JC says,

I disassembled my iPod and re-seated both ends of the hard drive cable. After doing so, my iPod no longer exhibits click-of-death or Sad iPod anymore.

The connector is pretty solid on the hard drive side of the cable, but the iPod side is a ZIF-style [Zero Insertion Force] connector. It's taped down fairly well, and sandwiched between the main board and hard drive such that I can't see it loosening easily. Re-seating it, though, did the trick.

He doesn't include any info on how to take apart an iPod but does reminder readers that, "Google is your friend". And, proving him right, we were very quickly able to come up with the iPod 4th Generation Take Apart Repair Manual (8.02MB PDF - right-click to download under Windows; ctrl-click under Mac OS). This is located over on Power Book Medic - a site that all owners of iPods and Mac portables ought to bookmark because of the many take-apart manuals it offers for download in PDF format.

Oh, and even if you've not got a dicky iPod, you still might want to check out JC's amusing and illuminating little story of serendipity. His discovery only arose AFTER he'd dropped his already-cream-crackered iPod from a third floor window!

No, he'd not done that out of sheer frustration but, instead, while testing an iFrogz case - to see how well that protected the player from damage. Well, would you use your own working iPod? Thing is, when he went to see what had happened, he found out that the iPod had survived intact and had only started working again! That roused his curiousity and set him searching for a permanent cure.

Feel like commenting? How about telling us your best fix-it stories or favourite take-apart manual sites? The place for it is over in the HEXUS.community.

HEXUS.links

mac geekery - Fix Your Dead iPod For Free
Power Book Medic - iPod 4th Generation Take Apart Repair Manual (8.02MB PDF - right-click to download under Windows; ctrl-click under Mac OS)
Power Book Medic - Home page
Wikipedia - ZIF (Zero Insertion Force) socket

HEXUS.community :: your right2reply

Posted by SpawnofSonic - Thu 1st Jun 2006, 8:35pm

I did this to my 5th Gen and it cured :D was very happy, saved me sending it backQuote

Posted by alsenior - Fri 2nd Jun 2006, 12:59am

all hardrives click when they dont get enough power. i thought the guys at hexus would have figured that out after all these yearsQuote

Posted by Bob Crabtree - Fri 2nd Jun 2006, 10:29am

Quote: alsenior
all hardrives click when they dont get enough power. i thought the guys at hexus would have figured that out after all these years

And this has, what to do with the article and this thread?

Bob (who's lost more IBM HDDs to the click of death than he would have ever believed possible - none of them curable by jiggling with power connectors!)Quote

Posted by alsenior - Fri 2nd Jun 2006, 5:45pm

the part of plug that came out was probably the power side of the connector rather than the data sideQuote

Copyright © 1998 - 2010, HEXUS.net. All rights reserved. Terms, conditions and privacy information.
HEXUS® is a registered trademark of HEXUS Limited.

My HEXUS

:: New User
:: Lost Password

Browser Plugins
::

IE7 Search
::

Firefox 2 Search

Hottest items

Latest Poll

High Def......

Headlines