…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.

So, you got the dreaded folder or sad face icon on your iPod? Apple support, and various other iPod resources around the web tell you to first try to “restore” your iPod. The restore function is found within iTunes and is available from the iPod pane when your iPod is plugged in. But what exactly happens when this mysterious button is clicked? And more importantly, what can it, and can’t it do? Read the rest of this entry »

So, you woke up this morning to find your iPod with a sad face. “Poor little guy” you say, “what happened?” iPods who upon being turned on flash either the Sad iPod face, or the folder icon usually have suffered from either hard drive failure, or a bad motherboard (logic board). But how can you tell which? Read the rest of this entry »

Firewire vs. USB. Those of you who are fervent Mac or PC users will likely have strong feelings one way or another on this age old debate. Which one is better? Well which one is better in a general sense is not so important to this article, but rather which one is better when it comes to your iPods. Some iPods can only use USB, while some can only use Firewire. First a brief explanation of each.
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Probably the most common type of repair that we do involves replacing iPod batteries. While some batteries may fail with a year or less of use, more typically batteries last anywhere from one to three years. Customers often ask me, “What causes my iPods battery to die?”. And thats a fair question.
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The failure rate for Apple’s iPod portable music player ranges from 5-20% over a period of several years of average usage. Having inspected and repaired literally thousands of iPods in the past several years, we can confirm that this number is indeed accurate. Commonly our customers ask the question, “Why did my iPod fail?”. There is no single answer to this question.
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