PSA: My old iPod Classic needed a new battery or a full drive swap

I had a 5th gen iPod with a dead battery and a clicking hard drive. I could just swap the battery for about $15, or spend $45 on an iFlash board and a new SD card to replace the drive. I went with the full swap, and it took me an hour with a plastic opening tool. The thing runs silent now and holds all my music. Has anyone else done this and had the old drive fail soon after just a battery fix?

3 comments

3 Comments

maxm502mo ago

Yeah, it's that old rule about fixing one part on a tired machine. You put in a new battery, but the hard drive was already on its last legs from all the same years of use. It's like replacing just one bald tire when the other three are also cracked. You'll be back in there in a month. Seen it with old laptops too. A new power cord doesn't fix the fan that's about to die.

robin_foster12mo ago

But sometimes @maxm50, that one fix buys you another year.

troy_owens5d ago

Start with the battery swap and you might miss the real problem. I did the full iFlash swap on my 2nd gen mini and it turned out the old drive had already started corrupting some tracks without me noticing. @robin_foster1 is right that sometimes fixing one thing buys time, but with these old iPods the drive is usually closer to dead than people want to admit. The drive in mine started throwing errors about six months after I changed the battery. That clicking noise is basically the drive screaming for help.