[Pitrus]

but those that don't, give you no-end of problems, usually constantly changing errors

fortunately the first iflash I took (double sd) worked immediately, I did not take any more afterwards but I had to disassemble 2 ipods.
The first one I got used this summer and that's the one that has the problem of the central button, very angry a month ago I bought used another one and everything went immediately well with iflash.
If there is any problem, always the warranty and the iflash will be returned.
Have you already tried to replace the defective sd with another one to check with iflash what happens?

 

[ThinWalls]

Yeah, this one is seriously frustrating me. I'm just venting now, it's not really anything important, I have multiple mutli-terabyte working ipods already - I just wanted to make some use out of these surplus memory cards I had left over. But don't think it's going to happen.

What really bemuses me is the sheer variety of different errors I get - it's like a constant deluge of them - e.g. if I do manage to restore it with iTunes it comes back and iTunes immediately says it's now corrupted and needs to be restored again.

By restoring the ipod twice in succession I managed to get it working with 475GB (which is less than it should be, but never mind). But then when I tried to write to it it was _incredibly_ slow, and event manager revealed it was making huge numbers of 'disk errors'. Concequently got a lot of file corruption and then the thing later went back to 'red cross' mode.

When I earlier gave up on this 7th gen logic board and tried with the same iFlash and cards but in a 5th gen, syncing was so slow it would have taken 91 hours to do a full sync! 5th gens are slow, but not _that_ slow. I suspect if I'd looked at the event manager I'd have seen all those disk errors again.

Half the time iTunes doesn't recognize that the ipod is connected, and if I put it in DFU mode windows notices it's attached but iTunes still doesn't see it, and the ipod screen goes black and it never comes back on again, until I completely disconnect the battery and the iFlash and reconnect them. I managed to rockbox it at one point, but now I can't get the rockbox bootloader off of there again, because of that problem with the PC thinking another program is accessing the card if I put it in a card-reader.

(Incidentally, for the ipod classic, is the bootloader stored on a partition on the disk/iflash or is there an additional small amount of flash memory on the logic board somewhere? Anyone know?).

I tried it with just a single 128gb card in there, and iTunes restored it and then claimed it was a 30gb capacity iPod!

I've tried with multiple different configurations of the cards I have (4x128gb, 3x200gb and 1x16gb) swapping the order of cards, and reformatting them, and nothing works. Most of the time when I try to reformat them in a USB card-reader I get the 'partition table is locked by another program' message.

All these cards were originally from Amazon, directly, and all previously worked in other ipods. They aren't fakes. Unless they've 'gone bad' with all the endless card-swapping, I don't see it can be the cards that are faulty. Though I have not got the energy to retest them all with h2testw - and besides I have that problem of the PC constantly thinking another program is accessing them.

Also tried a dozen different ipod drive cables (long time ago bought a big batch of spare ones)

So it's either the logic board of the 7th gen (but then, I also had problems with the same iFlash and cards in a 5th gen) or it's a fault with the iFlash itself.

 

[ThinWalls]

Eventually managed to get it up and running. Had to leave out all the 200gb cards, and only use the 4x128gb ones. Also, weirdly, what seemed to break the cycle of endless errors, was putting a hard-drive in in place of the iFlash, then restoring it (which seemed to finally clear out the RB bootloader), then putting the iFlash back in (with the 128gb cards only) and restoring it again.
Have to conclude that one or more of the 200gb cards had gone bad, plus, somehow, putting the HD back in purely-temporarily, seemed to finally clear out whatever was causing the problems. Very odd.

 

[Pitrus]

Eventually managed to get it up and running

Lucky, you solved the problem; as I have already written, nothing is safe and the iPods are in such a precarious balance that nothing is enough to stop them from working.
I use itunes only to restore the ipod for everything else I always use floola

 

[ThinWalls]

Lucky, you solved the problem; as I have already written, nothing is safe and the iPods are in such a precarious balance that nothing is enough to stop them from working.
I use itunes only to restore the ipod for everything else I always use floola

Heh, turns out I spoke too soon - rockboxed it, then when syncing it, it got part-way and ran into disk-corrupton or an alleged 'bad block' (according to event viewer). Trouble is as the ipod doesn't really present the true disk to windows, you can't be sure what those event-viewer reports really signify.
And a problem with iFlash is you can't tell which card is causing such problems - assuming it is that there's a bad sector on one of the 128gb cards. Or it could be it's the iFlash itself, or the ipod logic board. Really impossible to identify the cause of these problems, and to narrow them down by testing each element in isolation is far too time-consuming.

Sigh.

What's floola, by the way?

 

[ThinWalls]

Oh, and iPod classics/videos are not as incredibly easy to upset as ipod minis. I tried flash-modding a few of those, but they are _insanely_ delicate. Just the act of opening them is often enough to cause the thing to stop working - either the click wheel cable fractures just from initially disconnecting it, or it seems like the whole thing just dies from the sheer shock of being removed from its housing.

Ipod classic/video seems to be the most moddable player around...just that when something does go wrong it's next-to-impossible to pin down where the problem is. Hence, as I say, either you get one up-and-running pretty easily, or you spend days and never get it to work.

 

[ThinWalls]

Damn, I know I'm becoming obsessive about this now. I should just give up on it and let it go, but keep trying to work out where the problem is - the SD cards, the ipod logic board, or the iFlash. The frustrating thing is some of those componants are clearly perfectly OK and it would be a huge waste to junk all of them. But which is causing the failure?

Tried again with a fifth gen ipod, same iFlash, back to using the 200gb cards. This time it worked up until I had synced a bit over 120Gb, where it started to produce massive directory corruption. Similar to what used to happen back in the early days of overheating SSD iFlash mods and.or syncing in rockbox mode.

So annoying that you can't tell with an iFlash mod, which card is bad, if it is a bad card that is the problem. Testing them with H2testw takes hours and hours for large cards, and in any case when I try that I run into that absurd "partition table locked by another program" error.

 

[ThinWalls]

Tested a single one of the 128gb cards with h2testw - took hours and hours and reported it was fine. Just 3 200gb cards and 3 128g cards to go...will only take two days of runtime to test them (sarcasm)...then if those come out good, have to assume it's the iFlash that's faulty. Really not worth the effort, I think.

Edit - now tested all 3 200Gb cards, and they all pass h2testw. Yet with those three and the 128gb card in the ipod, it still does the thing of restoring then instantly being corrupted.

 

[Pitrus]

then if those come out good, have to assume it's the iFlash that's faulty.

it could be exactly like that.

 

[morefilling]

Tested a single one of the 128gb cards with h2testw - took hours and hours and reported it was fine. Just 3 200gb cards and 3 128g cards to go...will only take two days of runtime to test them (sarcasm)...then if those come out good, have to assume it's the iFlash that's faulty. Really not worth the effort, I think.

Edit - now tested all 3 200Gb cards, and they all pass h2testw. Yet with those three and the 128gb card in the ipod, it still does the thing of restoring then instantly being corrupted.

Tarkan recommends putting the fastest card in #1. Are all the cards the same?

 

[ThinWalls]

Tarkan recommends putting the fastest card in #1. Are all the cards the same?

They are all Sandisk ultra, not sure if they are 100% the same (one is from Argos and is a lot older and a different appearance to the ones from Amazon, even though it's the same brand/name). I'm completely baffled by it all. Gotten so many iFlash ipods (and even a few generic-Chinese-green-adaptor-based ones as well*) working before, and none has been as troublesome as this attempt.

* The generic ones seem to be usable as long as one sticks to 5th gens and no more than 128gb

 

[morefilling]

They are all Sandisk ultra, not sure if they are 100% the same (one is from Argos and is a lot older and a different appearance to the ones from Amazon, even though it's the same brand/name). I'm completely baffled by it all. Gotten so many iFlash ipods (and even a few generic-Chinese-green-adaptor-based ones as well*) working before, and none has been as troublesome as this attempt.

* The generic ones seem to be usable as long as one sticks to 5th gens and no more than 128gb

For what its worth, Tarkan recommends always putting the fastest card in slot 1. I wonder if the older cards aren't mixing well with the newer cards (but Tarkan does say you can mix and match cards). You could try leaving out the older card & see if that fixes the problem.

 

[ThinWalls]

For what its worth, Tarkan recommends always putting the fastest card in slot 1. I wonder if the older cards aren't mixing well with the newer cards (but Tarkan does say you can mix and match cards). You could try leaving out the older card & see if that fixes the problem.

Yeah, tried that, tried various permutations of cards (as have 8 of them to work with). I really have no clue what is going on. Think I either have to get another iFlash and try that, or give up on the whole thing.

Edit - one last try, with just a single 16gb card in the first slot - again it gave loads of 'bad block' errors when I tried writing to the ipod. Surely this _must_ be a bad iFlash?

 

[ThinWalls]

I see there's a different-looking flash adaptor from the usual Chinese sellers on ebay. Taking 2 micro sd cards. Labelled with "imCort Design".

Is it a competitor for Tarkan? And if so, is it actually legit, or is it an unlicenced knock-off? Seems questionable how it's described as 'iFlash', I would have assumed that name was trademarked. Stupid thing is it's more expensive than Tarkans' (at least if ordering from the UK), so I don't see what the point is.
I wish someone would produce a 6xmicro-sd adaptor, though.

 

[ThinWalls]

Argh. Bought a brand new memory card, and _still_ this iflash/ipod combo won't work. Still get corruption if I try to copy anything to it.

Seems to be that either this iFlash is faulty, or there's something freaky about my PC, and in particular its USB connections. Last attempt will be to get another iFlash and try that.