iPod Video Repair 5th Generation. Some notes.

The thing that threw me off on this repair is that this iPod is not recognized by iTunes 9. (Separate post on that HERE.) I replaced the drive with an 8 gig Kingston Elite Pro Compact Flash card. 133x speed. It was on sale for about $20 at Fry's.

Like this one:


They also make a 16GB and 32GB like these.





Note that the price per gigabyte gets cheaper as you go to a larger capacity. The 32gig is only 3 times as expensive as the 8 gig. I got my iPod in a broken state so I didn't want to spend too much to find out it's very broken instead of slightly broken.

Plus, if you get a 32, then you've got an extra 2Gb over your old Video. It's expensive, but now it's shockproof and easily upgradeable. Just plug in a new card.

What you will need is an adapter like the one I got to adapt a Cf card in place of a 1.8" hard drive.

The one I bought is slightly different. PA-CF18Z is what mine is labeled and I've seen them around the internettube. It's probably not important, there isn't much in the way of electronics, it's mainly a physical interface.

I won't bore you with the details of this conversion any more, as you can find that all over. But in summary:

1. Kingston 8 gig Kingston Elite Pro Compact Flash card 133x. $20ish
2. PA-CF18Z CF to ZIF 1.8" adapter. $2.28 shipped from China. (I do not think a Microdrive is a good fit for this adapter, too thick. But who's going to use that?)

And if you get it showing up as a drive but not in iTunes, I'm sure Apple will fix it sooner or later. C'mon, we're on iTunes 9.0.1 and the minor stuff (that works in the OLD VERSION) should be fixed. That's a Microsoft move!

Why did I do the conversion? Simple. The hard drive in it died. Now I can take it jogging without that fear, enjoy longer battery life, and enjoy easy upgrades down the road.

Comments

theroblog.com said…
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theroblog.com said…
I have problems with occasionally getting the "Connect to your computer. Use iTunes to restore." message when trying to wake the iPod from sleep.

A simple reboot of the iPod has always solved it.

Formatting the iPod in Apple format seems to work better vs. a Windows format.

Anyone have ideas on a solution for this?

Also the iPod thinks I have 96GB when I have 8 when viewing the 'Hard Drive' info using the onboard diagnostics. That's when using either Windows or Mac format.

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