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Model A1136 / 30, 60, or 80 GB hard drive / black or white plastic front

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iPod hard drive won't fully connect to pc or itunes

My 80 gig Ipod video 5th generation has the following issue.

If I connect it to any PC an icon for the ipod drive will show up under "My Computer". Sometimes it is labeled "USB drive" or maybe not labeled at all. If you try to open it the PC will perpetually hang and nothing happens. Under "Device Manager" the Ipod shows up under "Disk drives" as "Apple Ipod USB Device". Also it will not show up in itunes . The ipod charges and works perfectly otherwise.

There is a lot of music stored on the ipod hard drive and I don't want to factory reset it because I will lose what's on the drive. I do not have an itunes backup of the content.

Now I am going to eliminate a lot of potential problem issues to consider immediately.

I have another 80 gig ipod video that works perfectly. To narrow down possible problems I took the hard drive out of this ipod and put it into the problem ipod, ...both 80 gig Toshiba MK80101GAH drives. So the logic board, hard drive connector ribbon cable and USB cable, etc... from the problem ipod is used with the hard drive from the known working ipod. Now when I plug the ipod into my PC using this drive everything works fine. The hard drive can be accessed under "My Computer" and under itunes. The only thing that is different is that I switched the hard drives. The rest of the hardware is the same. The hard drive that won't open on the PC has all my music on it and works fine in the ipod otherwise. I just can't get the PC to open it and can't back it up. I've tried to use a zif USB connector to open the drive but that won't work either.

The drive works perfectly in the ipod I just can't access it to back it up and there is nothing wrong with the hardware otherwise. .....Please help!

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Have you tried using a different cable to connect to the PC? sounds like the cable is the issue.

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The cable works perfectly. I used the same USB cable with both setups. The hard drives were the only thing different. All other pieces of hardware are the same even the hard drive ribbon cable. One drive connects to the PC and one does not.

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Sounds like a hard drive failure You may not be able to recover that data. You can give some money to a professional and see if them MAY be able to recover it. https://www.datarecoveryguru.com/?gclid=... It has to be a proffesional because I'm pretty sure you do not have a cleanroom lab in your house.

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The hard drive hasn't failed. It boots normally on the ipod and the 5000 songs on the drive play fine. Other than not seeing the drive on a PC everything else is normal. If it was a drive failure it probably wouldn't even boot up. The problem I've described is something else.

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Okay I'm going to go through a list of things that may solve the problem:

Try a different USB port on the PC

try a different PC

try reinstalling itunes.

try rebooting the PC

try rebooting the ipod

try using ibackupbot to view your files http://www.icopybot.com/itunes-backup-ma...

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I've tried all the things on your list except icopybot. My ipod is an ipod video 5th generation and not new enough. It requires an ipod touch with OS 2 or newer. By the way please don't ignore the fact that if I switch the ipod hard drive with another drive everything works fine. By doing that I have eliminated everything on your list as being a possible cause - cable, computer, itunes and anything with the ipod hardware except the drive. I need some out of the box ideas to solve the problem. I would just throw this hard drive away and get another one except it works fine in the ipod and I don't have a backup of the music that's on it. I appreciate your help but all the potential problems you have mentioned so far are eliminated by switching the drives as described in my original post. This drive works fine in my ipod. I need it to mount in the computer.

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Alan Lilly will be eternally grateful.
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