Occasional Observations

Now the stricken iPod is back, I've been Googling around and run some tests to try and identify what's wrong. It looks and sounds as if the hard drive is dodgy although I really can't find anything else wrong, even having worked through the diagnostics. See my iPod bookmarks in del.icio.us for a bunch of useful sites on iPod diagnosis, of course I should have consulted these before turning mine in for a shoddy ?35 "diagnosis": makes me wonder if any out-of-warranty iPod is simply labelled as a failure and returned.

If the hard drive is up the creek then the good news is that I'll get a 30GB replacement. It's vital to check the dimensions of any replacement drive - the 20GB 4G iPod has a 5mm thick drive, while the 40GB model (and the current 60GB 5G iPod) have an 8mm thick drive - so these won't fit. But the 30GB 5G drive will. It's a Toshiba MK3008GAL drive, for reference.