[chadbang]

I may have been the first idiot to try this (as I can't find a story on the web of anyone else who has tried it - even at the ipod lounge), but last night I ran Norton's Utilities on my iPod. The iPod had been crashing everytime I tried to copy songs to it from my Powerbook. It was driving me crazy. A half dozen forced restarts. Then, during on non-forced restart, Norton's started doing it shutdown scan and the message popped up that there was a problem with the directory of my iPod. I didn't think Norton would have even scanned the iPod, but I guess it scans all attached discs. It said the problem could be fixed using Norton's Disc Doctor.


Well, I was pissed and frustrated and thought, why not. So I restarted the powerbook. Open itunes and connect the ipod. When it was mounted, I opened Norton's Disc Doctor and ran a check on the mounted iPod. I found the "wrong version" of a directory. I panicked and "skipped "fixing it. I mean, Apple didn't even write the iPod's software, right? Well, back into itunes. Another crash and freeze. More frustrations, so I restarted and went back into Norton's. This time I let it repair the ipod. What the heck? Well, it seemed to fix the problem. (as well as a few creation dates and a bundle bit being off.) Back in ituns I could copy songs to the iPod without it freezing. I haven't experienced any problems using the ipod on its own. So I am happy, if a bit nervous about risking it.

Anyway, anyone else ever tried running Nortons on an iPod or ever heard a story of someone else using it?

 

[Taphil]

I only understood about 5% of what you were saying, but...

Perhaps the hard drive is bad. Try this. Plug the mini into the AC adapter. Reset it by pressing Menu and Center. When the Apple logo appears, press RW and Center. That'll put the mini into diagnostic mode. Use the FF button to move down to the SMRT SCAN test, and then hit the center button. The scan should take less than 20 mins to finish and say HDD PASS if the hard drive is good.

On one of the minis I had to return, the hard drive was defective. I could write files to that bad cluster on the drive, but the computer could not read the bad cluaster - the mini would stop responding if it was accessed. It was solved by running Scandisk in Windows which marked the cluster bad so it would never be accessed. But the drive was bad nonetheless, which is why I returned it.

 

[MN Ham Phones]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chadbang Anyway, anyone else ever tried running Nortons on an iPod or ever heard a story of someone else using it?

Haven't heard or read anyone else trying this....

Count yourself fortunate (if not lucky) that the iPod seems to be working OK. My suggestion is to develope a backup plan now for your music, and perhaps the rest of your docs.

Yeah, you may have many/most of the songs on CDs, but would you really want to re-rip them all? Also, what about your iTunes purchases?

 

[Cor]

Quote:

Count yourself fortunate (if not lucky) that the iPod seems to be working OK. My suggestion is to develope a backup plan now for your music, and perhaps the rest of your docs.

Actually, if your iPod was formated for use on a PC then it uses FAT32, the same as on many microsoft boxes. (NTFS is probably a little more common now, thanks to XP) If damage to the file allocation tables occured then it's not surprising that Norton was able to fix it. Not in the least! Such damage could easily be caused by unplugging your iPod from your PC without undocking it first, provided some sort of write operation was happening when you unhooked it. Physical damage to the disc caused by a head-crash could cause problems too. (i.e. Your iPod received a good whack when it was reading from the disk) In either case, you'd have blocks on your disc that wouldn't behave properly and could cause poorly written software (i.e. Software that doesn't intellegently handle exceptions) to crash. The crashes would be consistent until you use a disk utility, such as norton, to repair the disc allocation table. (If there is a bad sector on the disc caused by physical damage, it would just be marked off limits and avoided in the future) The only thing I find surprising is that iTunes choked and crashed. I suppose it's not that surprising though, given apple's past history when it comes to writing software for Windows. (e.g. Quicktime. Ugh!)

Bottom line: No worries. I'm sure other people have either solved the problem in the same way as yourself, or failing that, they probably just wiped and reset their iPods and then reloaded everything, thereby fixing the same problem in another manner. Wiping and reloading is pretty much a standard recommendation from Apple tech support for all iPod related problems. I've had other problems "magically disappear" thanks to the procedure. (e.g. A bug that caused my iPod's contrast to max out at an unusably low level.) It's sort of like how reloading the OS and software on a Windows box can resolve a lot of flaky behaviour.

P.S. Given how many problems can occur with an iPod that can only be resolved by wiping and rebooting, you really should be keeping copies of all your files on your hard-drive as well as on your iPod.

 

[chadbang]

Thanks, Cor. That sounds like a reasonable accessment. Day two and everything is working fine, knock on wood. But now I'm going to start a back up proceedure of my files (have to buy a extra hard drive to do it!), just in case. Yes, re-ripping would be the death of me.

I can't believe Apple tech only recommendation is to "restore" eg, erase the harddrive. That's just damn lazy. You'd think they'd at least have some form of checking/repair software for the ipod at this point.

 

[blessingx]

Hmm, not sure of the details, but I've heard of several database issues, and so far no file system problems, with the iPod. Restore/reformatting would certainly take care of both.

 

[chiefroastbeef]

ipod lounge doesn't recommend using any of the norton stuff, all they said was restore the ipod(erase) and reformat it, i haven't had any troubles with my hd, but i hope norton worked for you!

 

[MuZI]

This is on the APPLE webpage in FAQ. They recommend you don`t use Norton, but they recomend that you use the software that APPLE has for it. I don`t remember exactly said but got the Apple.com and see their FAQ.