For some time, I have been having trouble with my 4th generation 20 gb iPod hard drive. Main symptoms have included the folder with the exclamation point, a horrible clicking noise and the dreaded sad iPod icon. The iPod is about a year and a half old. For a while, I found that spanking it worked to revive it, but recently the pod seemed to have bitten the dust.

Anyhow, I got tired of dealing with it so I decided a more permanent fix was called for. After doing a lot of web research on what others had done, I decided on a plan of action.

Since I got the iPod as a gift, I wasn't really out any cash yet. I know Apple charges a ridiculous amount for repairs (standard charge is $250) and I wasn't about to do that. I discovered that the hard drive in my iPod was a Toshiba 2004GAL model. My research indicated that the Toshiba MK3006GAL model 30gb hard drive would fit. I figured if I was going to replace the drive I might as well upgrade it at the same time to get some more space. I looked around for a good deal and ended up finding the drive I wanted from Ewiz for $105.The drive arrived a while later and I was ready to begin.

The best step-by-step guide on replacing the hard drive was from a guy named Josh Highland. I followed this for the most part with a couple changes. I didn't have a razor blade scraper so I ended up using a basic kitchen knife to get the foam padding off. It wasn't perfect but it worked. When I went to put the padding back on the new drive, I ended up using a little super glue on the corners of the pad. It seemed to hold it just fine.I popped the back on the iPod and was ready to give it a try.

First, I tried to restore the iPod using the iPod updater software. For some reason it would not initialize. Some of my research had indicated that the new hard drive might need to be formatted in Windows first. I went into My Computer, right clicked on the iPod and selected format. Then I waited. It probably took about an hour but finally it finished. As soon as the format finished, I got a message that popped up saying that the drive needed to be set up for the iPod. The message included a button that said update and invoked the iPod updater software. It updated successfully and then I did a full restore for good measure. That didn't take long at all and when it finished I checked out the pod and everything was fine.

My next step was to sync my iTunes library. By this time it was pretty late, so I started the sync process and went to bed. I was a little worried as I had had many problems syncing with my old hard drive. Sometimes half my library of 4500 songs would transfer and then it would crap out. Sometimes I'd get an error message and other times the computer would just reboot in the middle. However, in the morning I got up, I checked it and everything had synced without a problem. I've been using it ever since without a problem and the iPod is as good as new. :-)