…One of the first symptoms of a dying battery is a shortened charge time (less play per charge, so to speak). However, there is another possible reason for such decrease.

…..The internal component that requires the most energy to run is not really the screen but the hard drive. That is due to the fact that it has mechanical parts -moving at a high speed. One of the factors that can make it spin more than necessary is called fragmentation -which means that instead of occupying one continuous chunk of space on the disk, a file (say, a song) is split into several different pieces throughout it. This happens because, as files get written and deleted, they do not get reorganized to take over the freed up space (like in a liquid medium) -but they leave a number of ‘holes’ where they used to be (sort of like in a brick wall) -holes that have to be used by the new files, even if they’re not large enough for them, occupying several to fit in and thus ending up split. Eventually, the number of files that are ‘cut’ this way grows larger and larger, requiring more and more battery power to get read, and so lowering the amount of plays that you can get per charge.

…..There are two radical solutions for this issue, one involves iTunes (bringing all your iPod’s songs into your computer and doing a restore so that they get written in a continuous and orderly manner ), the other, a little less dramatic, involves using a disk defragmenting program, such as Disk Warrior, that can achieve pretty much the same result.

…..It is a time consuming process, but definitely one you should try before deciding to replace your battery.