While many of us have switched from iPod to iPhone, or even given up either for iPad, it certainly seems that most of us still have working iPods. Every iPod’s day comes eventually, but in a wide variety of cases, it is possible to revive a seemingly dead iPod with one of five simple steps.
Apple calls them the Five Rs.
Hard drive-based iPods like iPod Classic have a telltale failure that’s easily diagnosed by simply pressing your ear to the back of the iPod. If you hear clicking or grinding that repeats at regular intervals, odds are the hard drive inside the iPod has failed.
While only a tiny percentage of these devices actually fail in their first years of existence, some do. Because hard drives are like record players, it’s not surprising that shaking an iPod over the course of a year will cause hard drive failure.
The Five Rs mentioned above will not fix a broken hard drive, nor a cracked screen, nor dents on the corner of your iPod. But you have nothing to lose by trying the troubleshooting steps when your iPod isn’t working properly.