Ebay Ipod

[Alistair C]

A couple of weeks ago, my other half had her ipod and handbag stolen.
She was rather attached to her G4 20G pod so we bought another '14day return / demo' unit from a trustworthy powerseller.

The unit arrived today but on powering up discovered it had disk problems:

I looked up everything I could on the web and the Apple troubleshooting site but to no avail.
Tried running the Ipod scandisk function but we kept returning to the same error message.



Eventually came across THIS site with the following 'advice'.

The Solution - This is where the genius in me lies(ahem ahem). The instant it starts slowing down, whoop its fat metal **** to a table. Hit it. Serious. ONE BIG BLOW. The hard disk will continue to spin with the jerk and woohooo.. It works.'

Being skeptical, it was the absolutely last thing to try. But blow me, it did actually work!

I now have a fully functioning IPOD which even passes the scandisk function.

So what now???? The seller offers a short (3day!) warranty period. Do I send it back now and run the risk with another or just run with this one? What is the likelyhood that the HDD will have developed a permanant fault that the scandisk function can't see anymore?

(It was a bargain BTW!)

[r33fgirl]

If it happened once, it may happen again...

Personnally, I'll send it back to the seller to get another fully functionnal one... if there's no cost attached to all of this of course.

Hitting electronics has never been so good for long term use.. think about that

[Jamo]

Hitting electronics has never been so good for long term use.. think about that

Beg to differ, it's what we in the trade call an "engineers fix"

It works on p.c's, printers and laptops

[Jamo]

Alistair what you have to consider is how much is p&p going to cost you to return it?
and theres a strong likelyhood that the replacement may have the same fault and not work.

The bang is because the hard disk head reader gets stuck or is stiff and it just moves it's

quite common on small hardware that use small hard disks

[Alistair C]

Well IMHO - it is all probably a result of citylink (aka ******link) playing football with it.

so whats the physics behind a HDD 'sticking' ? and then spinning nicely again?
In all honesty it was more of a 'persuasion tap' than the recommended 'one big blow'.

Well its now having 3500 songs dumped on its shiny clean platter. Lets see how it goes......

[Alistair C]

Alistair what you have to consider is how much is p&p going to cost you to return it?
and theres a strong likelyhood that the replacement may have the same fault and not work.

The bang is because the hard disk head reader gets stuck or is stiff and it just moves it's

quite common on small hardware that use small hard disks

exactly what I was thinking. The shrewd seller has stated returns are at buyers cost. And seeing as citylink are about as much use as the proverbial, I had to pick it up from their depot too after a round trip of ~60 miles. Would prefer not to have to go through that again TBH!

So using the 'persuasion method' then Jamo, are the typical results encouraging & longlasting - or is it just putting off the inevitable?

[Jamo]

exactly what I was thinking. The shrewd seller has stated returns are at buyers cost. And seeing as citylink are about as much use as the proverbial, I had to pick it up from their depot too after a round trip of ~60 miles. Would prefer not to have to go through that again TBH!

So using the 'persuasion method' then Jamo, are the typical results encouraging & longlasting - or is it just putting off the inevitable?

Long lasting i can't common on, i do know i've heard of this problem with ipods before

With only a 3 day return window i'd be inclined to risk it as i could be more hassle returning it than it's worth.

Anybody else have a view?

[Azman]

I have had this problem with mine when I got it a while back. One quick tap (worked with my laptop HD) and it was running fine, to this day "touch wood" I have not had a problem with it.

[Sidspud]

I've been a PC engineer for 17 years. Back in "the good ol' days" when hard drives were the size and weight of breeze blocks it was the done thing to give them a thump. Compaq had a 40MB hard disk (don't all go WOW at once now! ) that had a dead spot on the motor. If the drive powered down on the dead spot it wouldn't start up again, until you either shook it or hit it.

We used to run a monitor repair workshop and the first thing to try was to hit the monitor. Its a method still used today, although I wouldn't recommend it on LCDs!

I'd say, keep it. Better the devil you know ....

[S2 Ant]

I'd keep it and see what happens, if it happens again and the same fix works then id then be inclined to put it back on the bay afterwards whilst it was working again.

[mcandmar]

It’s a common issue but i wouldn’t worry about it, should be fine. A few years ago Western Digital had problems with drives in that the heads when hot used to stick to the hard drive platter when powered down. Next time the disk was powered it wouldn’t spin up. You guessed it, the fix is a sharp blow to the machine and away they went. I was working for a PC manufacturer at the time and we had to tell customers to lift the front of the PC half an inch off the desk and then let go of it

[Robatron]

My PC has been fixed several times with a few swift blows. The PSU starts chugging sometimes, I give it a whack and everything seems to run smoothly again.

At work we have had problems with RAID drive that mirrors one harddrive. Nothing a rubber mallet didnt fix...

[Jamo]

r33fgirl are you a believer in the engineers fix yet?

[S2 Ant]

LOL Jamo... bang it hard..... is that what you wanna know if she thinks is a good idea? LMAO!

Are we still talking about electronic devices?

[mreinders]

I think you'll find this is called percussive maintainance, works good for dry solder joints too....