A tale of iPod woe. While trying to synchronize a large number of podcasts with an 80GB iPod Classic, I noticed that the sync process would terminate before it was finished. Although iTunes had indicated that files had been transferred, when I looked on the iPod they weren't there.

I used Vista's drive tools to test the iPod's drive. Searching online I had found a few indications that this was not a good idea, but a few noting that this had fixed the problem. Since my fallback position was to restore the iPod to factory state, I wasn't too worried.

I first started with a scan and repair of the drive (Start > Computer > right-click on drive > Properties > Tools). This showed that there were a large number of corrupted files that Vista had now repaired. This didn't fix the problem, however, as the next sync attempt gave me the same result (i.e. terminating before the file transfer was complete).

Next, I used iTunes to restore the iPod to its factory settings. The one area that I had heard of Vista having problems was in the area of large file transfers. Maybe that was what was happening here: trying to sync the entire library at once was somehow causing the sync process to terminate, corrupting the transferred files in the process. To get around this, I started to manually sync separate portions of the library, starting with the music and then proceeding one podcast at a time. After I synced the music, I disconnected the iPod, tested that the sync had worked (it had!), and then reconnected the iPod to sync the first podcast.

All was going well until I got to the third or so podcast. The sync completed, and I disconnected the iPod through iTunes. I watched the "disconnecting" progress bar that displays on the iPod, watched as it hung at the very last increment.

I pulled the iPod out of its cradle and reset it (something I have learned to too with the all too frequent freeze-ups on my own 5th-gen iPod as well as Nathalie's Classic). The Apple logo came up, then a "click", blackscreen, back to the Apple logo, "click", blackscreen, etc. I had discovered the dreaded Apple-click-Apple phenomenon, essentially the blue-screen-of-death for iPods.

Worse, actually: you can reboot after a BSOD. Not so here. The iPod was continually rebooting. A bit of digging and I discovered that I could stop this by putting iPod into Disk Mode, which I did. This brought up a System-7-ish UI which was limited to telling me if the iPod was locked, if the battery was recharging, and if it was save to disconnect the iPod from the computer. Limited, but enough to move forward.

iTunes could see the iPod, but was adamant that it needed to be restored before it could be used. I could see the drive through Vista, but when I tried to access it or use any disk tools on it, I got an error message about the drive being in use. I tried the restore process, which seemed to work, except when the iPod booted up, I reverted to the same apple-click-apple rebooting loop as before.

Now I was starting to get worried. I didn't want to have to send the iPod back to Apple: it was an engraved unit and I was fairly certain that I would have only gotten a refurbished unit back in exchange for this one. I was also worried that the problem was rooted in Vista, and that a new iPod wouldn't fare much better. I was frustrated by the lack of a true restore process, a way to wipe the iPod entirely clean and start fresh. (This is what I had mistakenly thought the restore function in iTunes did.) I was also frustrated that what started as a file transfer glitch may have bricked my iPod.

As is often the case when faced with this kind of technical barrier, I just kept at it. I tried new things. I tried the same things. I tried things in a different sequence. Again and again, I couldn't get past the apple-click-apple reboot.

Suddenly, and attempt to scan and fix the drive worked! Vista said it found no errors on the drive. I was just glad to have access to the drive! Having nothing to lose, I decided to reformat the drive from Windows (right-click on the drive > format). The process started, and it took Vista over an hour to format the iPod's drive, but it worked. I then used iTunes to restore the iPod, and that worked too. Finally, I manually synced the library content bit by bit over to the iPod and everything was back to normal.

I don't know what exactly caused the problem, so I can't be sure that it won't happen again. Reading through the Apple support/discussion/venting boards, it seems that there are a number of other people that have run into the apple-click-apple state, and who have not been able to get past it. My hope is that eventually Apple will release an update to the iPod's firmware that will do away with the problem and make the restore process closer to infallible. In the meantime, I can only hope that if I run into this problem again that I'll be able to come up with a solution that doesn't require sending the iPod back for replacement.