iTunes 7 update possibly damaged my iPod?

[poohjlv]

Here's my story:

After downloading the iTunes 7 update, I plug in to update my iPod. It sucessfully updates. I unplug it and there is no music on it. I restore it only to get the folder with the !. For about a week I get the error message that I cannot eject it because the files are in use by another application. For another week, I get the message that the disk is not mounted, cannot be written to or read and cannot be restored.

I have tried every restore and erase trick. I called Apple and they said that there is nothing they can do because the hard drive is bad.

During these two weeks of trying to restore it, whenever the iPod had power, it would show the apple on screen, then the folder with the !, then it would abruptly stop spinning and restart. It would go on this cycle until it lost power.

Don't you think that two weeks of this destructive spinning would ruin a perfectly good hard drive? Now apple will not cover the damages.

Does this seem like a logical conclusion or am I coming from left field? Any suggestions? I really don't think I should have to pay for damages caused by Apple's faulty product. The technician on the phone said that the licensing agreement says something along the lines that I can't be gauranteed the safety of my iPod's hardware while using this software. Does anyone have a copy of the licensing agreement?

Thanks.

[fryke]

How old is your iPod? It doesn't have to be iTunes 7 doing the damage. It could really simply be the age/wear of the harddrive.

[poohjlv]

It's less than two years and has not been through any hard wear.

I immediately began having software problems on the iPod as soon as I updated. I had never had a problem before. It seems logical that all of the iPod's rebooting, due to the software, would cause it to damage the hardware.

[fryke]

Well, yes, but that could also be a sign of the harddrive already being dead - and that's probably what the support person assumed. Maybe correctly.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Originally Posted by poohjlv

It seems logical that all of the iPod's rebooting, due to the software, would cause it to damage the hardware.

I gotta agree with Fryke here -- what you are basically saying is akin to someone telling you to walk across the room to the other side... and on your way, you trip over your own feet and fall and break your leg, then blame your broken leg on the person who told you to walk across the room.

It sounds very likely that your iPod was on the verge of death, possibly, and that a simple update or restart caused that problem to manifest itself right then and there. I highly doubt that iTunes 7 itself caused the iPod to become broken -- if the iPod needed to be restarted due to an update, and the restart itself caused the iPod to break, then the hardware was already on its way out... the software isn't responsible for this.

I do think that keeping the iPod connected to the computer for two straight weeks was probably a bad idea -- the iPod is not meant to have the hard drive run for that length of time, and that could very well cause it to fail. Whether or not it's the fault of iTunes 7 is up for debate -- I would tend to think waiting two weeks with a non-working iPod to seek help is a bit extreme.

[tree]

First I don't have any iPod, but it looks me obvious that the iPod is related with the Toshiba Libretto harddrive. What You can try is continue to use your iPod, it might repair your ipodos. If I were You I would try to move all data that doesn't is iTunesstore to your computer.

[devinleaf]

Many users seem to be suffering similar problems -- Google the error messages and you'll get a lot of hits. We are currently having these issues with one of two first generation iPod Shuffles (with a Windows XP based host), so a faulty disk is clearly not a definitive explanation.

We've found that the problem iPod can be updated when re-docked on a different Windows 2000 or XP machine. We can also get the Shuffle to update on the problem computer by removing and reinstalling iTunes 6.0.5. We then suffer the inability to eject the iPod -- either form iTunes or from Windows. But yanking the iPod from the USB port without ejecting leaves the tunes intact.

The problem's returned at least once since we "fixed" it.

[grnvnz9]

The new itunes 7 will ruin your ipod. Just now it shifted all my music to this category called "other" and now I can't access it on itunes or anything else. It really is fuggin drivin me insane.