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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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