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Formatting options can render an iPod useless System
Ok, so no one else goes through the pain I have gone through ... I recently started having drive problems with my brand new 15gb Gen 3 iPod. Periodically, it would start up in scan disk mode, I'd let it go for half an hour, and then it would say I have a disk error. And of course, it gave you no more info than that.

So I fired up the trusty Disk Utility, and checked for errors, of which it found none. I backed up my MP3s and ran the iPod Restore utility. But still, the iPod would not boot in anything but the scan disk. So while I was in the Disk Utility, I decided what they hey, and click on it to be reformatted in the MacOS Extended format. Why not?

Normally it would not be a problem. But here's the kicker. Being that I thought I had some sort of file corruption on the iPod, I selected Zero All Data. This is equivilant to slamming your (insert favorite body part here) in a waffle iron for a few hours. It does not ever finish zeroing the data, and on top of that, my wonderful MP3 player / hard disk is now just a hard disk. It will no longer boot out of disk mode.

Apparently, according to my freindly Apple store associate, this wipes the basic system files the iPod needs. No biggie, right? Just fire up the old Restore program! But ahh, grasshopper, the reformat has wiped the files that allow this Restore program to recognize the device as an iPod. So my iPod took an iDump, and all I have is a 15gb FireWire drive (its really shiny though!).

I have been told about how great Apple is with there service on new products, so I will consult with them on getting it service or replaced. But the moral is: Never run disk utility on the iPod with Zero All Data checked. It can ruin your day.

[robg adds: Not directly OS X related, but I know a number of you probably have iPods, so perhaps this will prevent a similar mistake by someone else.]
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Formatting options can render an iPod useless | 14 comments | Create New Account
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Could you block copy another iPod to get around this?
Authored by: Twelve on May 29, '03 11:06:14AM

Get your iPod, a borrowed healthy iPod, and a Mac running OSX.

run ls \dev\d* to see what disk devices exist with no iPods attached.

Attach the healthy iPod.

run ls \dev\d* to see what the new disk device is called. Presumably, this is the healthy ipod.

Attach the broken iPod and see what its device label is.

Run dd if=\dev\rdisN of=\dev\diskQ where N is the healty iPod and Q is the broken one. You might read man dd to find out other helpful options.

You should have a perfect block by block clone of the healthy iPod when this is done. You could then use the Firmware updater for good measure.



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Could you block copy another iPod to get around this?
Authored by: merlyn on May 29, '03 01:14:05PM

Ow ow ow! All those \ should be /!



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Carbon Copy Cloner
Authored by: matx666 on May 29, '03 01:24:32PM

Or try carbon copy cloner?



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Could you block copy another iPod to get around this?
Authored by: juump on Jan 17, '04 08:37:18PM

Thank you for this tip! I did the same stupid thing to my 40GB iPod, and wound up with a very expensive FW drive--that only thought it had 5GB of space on it. Pretty much a $500 paperweight.

However, I used Carbon Copy Cloner, as another poster suggested, and while it "failed" running out of room, it did put in the necessary files for the updater to reset the iPod. (Interestingly, it listed the 10G iPod's Serial Number until it restarted.)

Finally, "Reset" worked, and I was left with an empty 40GB iPod. So 12GB of songs lost, but who cares? It works again!



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Formatting options can render an iPod useless
Authored by: Darkshadow on May 29, '03 02:03:28PM

Actually, just a regular format will kill the iPod in the same way - the older files may still physically be on the drive somewhere, but the file system has no reference to them anymore and from any user's (or software's) point of view no longer exist, either.

Just mentioning it in case someone thinks that they could format the iPod and just not check the "zero all data" on it.



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I have formatted my 1st generation iPod in FAT and it works.
Authored by: peterhil on Jan 18, '04 01:38:56PM

I reformatted my 1st generation 10 GB iPod in FAT format so I could use it on either a Mac or a (friend's) PC.

After formatting my iPod in Disk Utility, it showed as a regular Firewire Hard disk and iTunes did not recognise it as an iPod. That was no surprise, as the formatting wipes the operating system (or at least the special hidden folders from ".iPod_control") from the iPod.

Then I tried to restore it in Virtual PC with the iPod restore application for Windows, but had no luck as the application and Windows only thought it was a regular FW HD (maybe because of Virtual PC?) no matter what I did.

Next, I went to my friends PC and plugged the iPod in, used the iPod restore application and hey presto! Now I had an iPod that works with both Macs and PCs. I have been using it like that for several months now and it works great. The name is now IPOD (in caps) and it lost it's icon for a general disk icon, but that can be pasted back.

The FAT format has some stupid limitations, though. You can't have some special characters ("/" and some others) in the file names or copying them into the iPod will fail. The resource forks also sometimes disappear and break things (Mac OS X keeps resource forks in FAT format disks in files which names start with a dot and underscore).

I have not yet tried to format it back to HFS+ format, I hope that does not kill the iPod as the previous poster states...



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Formatting options can render an iPod useless
Authored by: Anonymous on May 29, '03 03:34:09PM
We'll, few weeks ago i did the same to my two 5GB ipods, i made an raid out of those 2 (just for fun). I had to reformat the 2 ipods as an Raid set to make it work, afterwards i could restore them again with the restore utility. It only needed an reboot of my Mac, since they were not recognized as iPods indeed the first time (cold sweat) www.jaccorens.com

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Formatting options can render an iPod useless -duh!
Authored by: cjohn17 on May 29, '03 06:35:01PM

Why would somebody's first inclination be to zero out their brand new iPod without asking a few questions first of Apple?

Then I read another somebody decides to raid their iPods. Huh?

I wish I had your disposable incomes. I wish you luck.



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Formatting options can render an iPod useless
Authored by: bl0rg on May 30, '03 05:11:25PM

Just get the installation document for using linux with an ipod, an put the firmware back on the ipod using dd, after having created a few partitions with fdisk. Then you can use the Firmware Updater. Maybe you could even format the "big" partition as HFS+ directly, but I haven't tried that.



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Formatting options can render an iPod useless
Authored by: risc on Oct 24, '03 04:52:59PM

Actually, after the formatting of the iPod, try forcing the iPod to boot into FireWire mode (See http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60943). As long as you keep the drive mounted and run the 1.2.6 and 1.33 FW updaters, you should be good to go (as was the case for me with a 1st gen 5GB iPod that was experiencing a failed HD scan).

---
Matt



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Formatting options can render an iPod useless
Authored by: tumble45 on Jul 01, '05 12:06:18AM

ok another idiot here.
so i can see the ipod/drive F: and the icon on the ipod is the FW icon.
now i need to run an updater.
I just need to find an older version of the updaters.
right?

when I run the updater i get this error
"Updater can't install firmware on connected iPod. the iPod's hardware and the Updater firmware are not compatible"
ugh
is there some windows program that will format drives to Use Mac OS Extended format (HFS Plus)
I'm assuming because it is formated to FAT32 I am having this problem.

thanks
joe



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Formatting is OK if you know how to restore it
Authored by: macciius on Mar 19, '06 07:24:08AM

Just to clarify what others have pointed out already: it is OK to re-format the iPod's harddisk, even with a "zero all data" option, as long as you can recreate the two partitions, put back the firmware, and initialize the file system. (Perhaps the third step is not necessary, but I believe the first two are).

Why would one reformat the disk? Because that can help recover from some types of disk errors. My iPod had problems writing to certain disk blocks in the file system partition (file copy operation would just hang indefinitely). Disk Utility did not find anything wrong with the drive. I do not have Disk Warrior, but it probably would have reported bad blocks, which it cannot fix. In my case, reformatting with "zero all data" option made the ipod usable again.

I found the "Partitioning the iPod" article on Mac Geekery helpful. In a nutshell, my steps were: find the iPod disk in /dev (with disktool), remember what the partition table looks like (with pdisk), save the firmware partition (with dd), reformat the entire disk with the "zero" option (in Disk Utility), unmount the newly created partition, recreate the old partition table (with pdisk), copy old firmware into the first partition (with dd), create a file system in the second partition (with newfs), disconnect, reconnect and run iPod Updater. (This sequence assumes you do not care about files stored on the iPod and that your firmware partition is not corrupt.)



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Formatting is OK if you know how to restore it
Authored by: scubatankz on Oct 22, '06 08:52:45AM

To a Terminal novice can you walk me through the process you describe above - my iPod is ****ed and I have a nano I can get the firmware off ( I assume the firmware for Nano and iPod Photos is similar - keeps coming up with an error message 1418 when I plug in the iPod Photo - unplugged it during a restore - and have tried formating and starting again but as you describe - it needs the initial partition map and the firmware for me to get any further I think

Please please can you help - Your decription is a little complex to me as I've never used Termainal for anything

Cheers.. Liam



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Formatting options can render an iPod useless
Authored by: johnselekta on Jan 23, '07 01:46:11AM

Why thank you so much. I just got donated a 40gig gen 4 and was about to hit 'Zero all data' - it had been behaving erratically when PC formatted - but I thought I'd better check first. You just saved my skin. I'll just leave it mac
:-)



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