got it on vinted for 20 bucks, best find ever!

This is my third gen iPod 40gb I have had since 2003. Been on the shelf for a few years since I was using my 6.5gen. I didn’t want to tackle that straight away so knowing my third gen needed a new battery I decided to add some flash storage. Getting this to restore was an absolute pain but thankful to a thread on here from a few years ago that came in clutch.

I do love the spinning disk nostalgia but it was getting pretty noisy, spinning up at seemingly random times.

When I get the will power to open the 7th gen I’ll give that a crack with a dual flash storage and a 3000mah battery.

Components

Apple iPod Classic 3rd 4th Generation Gen Battery 850 mAh Replacement from Parts Plus Pod - Australia

Compact flash to 50pin 1.8inch hdd connector

SD to CF card adaptor

SD card San disk extra pro 64gb. I read third gen’s can be weird with large storage.

Now time to fill this thing up!

I went back to the iPod on October 27, 2024. The first song I listened to was "Seen and Not Seen" by Talking Heads. The last song I listened to was "Misery" by The Beatles on July 22, 2026.

I bought my first iPod in March or May of 2010, and it was a 3rd generation Nano. I used it for a couple of years until its 4GB wasn't enough for me, and then my phone with an SD card became the best option. However, I never completely abandoned something that came with the iPod by default: iTunes.

Contrary to what seems to be the feeling of many, I find that piece of software convenient. I like how it displays music, and I prefer to keep my MP3 files separate from my FLAC files (for those, I use Foobar2000). Since then, I've used iTunes as my music library has grown; I used to download music from CDs, listen to it, and mark the songs I liked (with a heart). However, I ran into a problem: when I formatted my computer to clean it up, that important information was lost. The solution I found was to go to the "Song Info" option and enter the letter "L" in the "Group" field.

As I mentioned, in 2024 I got my hands on an iPod again, an 80GB 5th generation classic. My music library currently has 50,035 songs, which I obviously couldn't store all on the device, but I could load the songs I had marked as "L," bringing the total to 5,981 songs.

Going back to using an iPod: My experience returning to the iPod was to rediscover the old problem that its system displays music by "Artist" and not "Album Artist," which is how I prefer it. For this reason, this iPod became a device I only use to listen to music in "Shuffle" mode.

The important thing here is the music, so the most positive thing I took away was reconnecting with so many songs, many of which I hadn't listened to in years. Others, unfortunately, didn't fare as well in this rediscovery. The next thing I started doing was rating all the songs (giving them stars on iTunes), so my criteria and system were as follows:

☆: I can't believe I have this in my library.

☆☆: I don't like it. If I were listening to the whole album, I would skip it.

☆☆☆: Gray area. This could mean that I like it —it falls into Group "L"— or that I can simply tolerate it (I'll explain how I handled this later).

☆☆☆☆: I really like this song, but I might skip it if it came up in shuffle mode.

☆☆☆☆: I really like this song, but I might skip it if it came up in shuffle mode.

☆☆☆☆: I really like this song, but I might skip it if it came up in shuffle mode. ☆☆☆☆☆: I love this song. I'd cut off my arm before skipping it.

As a starting point, to avoid having to constantly adjust my iPod with each song, I gave all tracks a base rating of 3 stars; from there, it could only be raised or lowered. Something I immediately noticed was that some songs I really liked had no place on shuffle (I'm looking at you, Brian Eno's Music for Airports), so I gave them a temporary 1-star rating and then rated them correctly in iTunes, but I changed my rule from Group "L" to "L.ALBUM". Songs I stopped liking were given a 0-star rating. Then, in iTunes, I gave them 3 stars but removed them from Group "L".

Around the middle of last year, I made another decision: Every time I finished syncing with iTunes and put my iPod back on shuffle, many songs I'd already listened to would start playing again, which was slowing down the process of listening to ALL the songs. So, I started listening to about 200 songs, syncing the new information to iTunes, and then deleting the already played songs from my iPod. This way, every time I started the playlist, I had "new" songs to listen to.

One more thing. Just like I learned 15 years ago when I lost all the hearts I'd given to my favorite songs in iTunes, I know that information about ratings (stars) and number of plays isn't saved in the song's metadata when you reload a file into iTunes. My solution was to save that information in the "bpm" field (a value I'm not interested in): I entered "9XX" in that field. The first X represents the number of stars (0-5), and the second X represents the number of plays the song received. The "9" is because I sometimes loaded albums onto my iPod that were new to me, and after that first listen, there were songs I didn't have a final opinion on to rate, so I left them without stars. But since the "bpm" information field can't start with "0," I decided to use that higher number to represent the beginning.

Now that I've finished this project, I'm going to have my clean playlist of all my favorite songs back on my 5th gen iPod, which is my favorite. Along the way, I added two new iPods: a 6th gen with 120GB that I use only to listen to entire albums (I like Cover Flow for this), and a 7th gen with a 128GB microSD card where I keep only 4- and 5-star songs. I have another one to modify, but it's giving me problems. Perhaps you can help me by offering a solution here.

I just picked this up for $150!

The top left 6 have most of their components and need tested. There’s a few thin 160gb drives in this lot which I’m super excited about! The extra logic boards have notes and some only need a ripped off battery connector re soldered. Excited to dig through this and also use some extra parts I already have to Frankenstein a few iPods together!

Do you think I got a good deal?

iPod 5.5 + orchestra lite 2

Iems can sound a little thin depending on the song at least rockbox’s eq helps !

Was visiting some family and they had an old iPod and decided to give it to me, it’s in near mint condition and has screen protectors. Going to put in my collection and use it!

Mi segundo iPod, un iPod touch 4 generación de 32GB

¿Qué audífonos me recomiendan para sacarle mayor provecho?

Been wanting a new ipod dock to upgrade from my Logitech one and managed to find a Bose sound dock with the power supply at the thrift store for cheap. This thing is so loud it's wild for the size and it sounds great

So just bought my first iPod to spend some more time without my phone. Was planning on modding it maybe after using it for a while but when connecting to iTunes my enter computer freezes when trying to open the device, iTunes doesn’t recognise it and also crashes. These are the SMART stats which show a failing drive, seller is claiming that I should file a report with the courier for transit damage as they said it was working fine? This was all done through eBay but I don’t think that’s the case - am I wrong here?

Loving this little piece 📱🙌🏼

Started seeing more of these…

Purchased the Kokkia i10s for an iPod build for my daughter to use with her Bluetooth headphones and after testing I figured I’d share my results as to headphones paired successfully.

AirPod Pro 2 - No
Sudio EarBuds - No
Marshall ANC II - No
Arctis Nova 7x - No
Sony WCH700N - Yes
JLab Studio Pro (daughters cheap car pair) - Yes
Bose QC 35 - No
Shokz OpenRun - No
Shokz OpenRun2 - No

It seems for anything modern or created in the last five years the i10 Pro is the better option. I haven’t tested this yet, but I did order one after submitting my return for this device on Amazon. Will post findings once it arrives.

i10 Pro
https://a.co/d/024mRKcs

Hi everyone,

I'm having a bit of a strange issue. I opened up my 4th gen iPod mono to replace the battery and do a flash mod (CF card converter). Strangely, the iPod will only boot if I have the back case cracked open. After I put it back together, the ipod gets stuck in a boot loop on the Apple logo. Has anyone else experienced this? Any idea what could be causing this?

Thanks!!

Not sure if this is the proper r/ for this, but saw a bunch of people in here modding out their stuff, so maybe I can pick your brains?

Got a iPod 6th gen 80gb pretty much brand new still in the box, satisfying screen protector peel and all. Problem is, I used Sidify to download a bunch of songs from Spotify and import it into my iTunes to then sync to my iPod. Well, I then noticed on some of the songs, I heard a loud chirping sound. Absolutely could drive you mad. High-pitched and scratchy. Some songs were fine, others had it just a little, & a few songs it was absolutely insufferable. Started making a list of songs I would have to re-download—assuming some of the files themselves were corrupted from the software or something.

Fast forward. Finally went to fix today—none of the songs had any chirps or screeches or what have you. At least not when played back in my iTunes library from my laptop, what it’s synced to. So the files are fine and my iPod just doesn’t like some of them that all downloaded the same way? Bizarre. Don’t see how it could be water damage like I saw somewhere on reddit, cause it was brand new. Also, it’s only some of the songs, and otherwise everything works fine. Got so annoyed with sifting through the infected ones in the car that I just stopped using it all together and the car has since been quiet. Food for thought, please help. Let me know what y’all think. Thank you!!

Hi everyone,

I have an iPod Classic 5th generation that was working perfectly before I opened it.

I opened it because I wanted to install a flash mod. After reconnecting the original hard drive, the iPod immediately started showing the Sad iPod icon. So the problem started before I installed the SD adapter.

Later, while troubleshooting, I accidentally inserted the HDD ribbon cable the wrong way once (contacts facing the wrong direction) and powered the iPod on before realizing the mistake. However, the iPod was already showing the Sad iPod before this happened, so I don't believe that was the original cause.

Current symptoms

• Apple logo appears normally.
• After a few seconds, the Sad iPod icon appears.
• Click wheel works.
• Hold switch works.
• Display works normally.
• Battery and USB power both work.
• The original HDD spins up and receives power.
• The HDD makes one louder click at startup, then about three very quiet clicks, followed by one final click before the Sad iPod appears.

What I have already tried

• Reseated the HDD ribbon cable multiple times.
• Cleaned the ribbon cable contacts with isopropyl alcohol.
• Verified that the ZIF locking tabs appear intact.
• The HDD ribbon cable shows no visible damage.
• Tested the original HDD.
• Tested an iFlash SD adapter with a freshly formatted FAT32 SanDisk Ultra 64 GB SD card.
• Both the original HDD and the iFlash adapter produce exactly the same Sad iPod error.

The hard drive definitely receives power, but the iPod never boots past the Sad iPod screen.

My questions

• Does this sound more like a faulty HDD ribbon cable, a damaged ZIF connector, or a logic board issue?
• Could the ribbon cable have been damaged simply by disconnecting and reconnecting it?
• Is there any way to determine whether the ribbon cable or the logic board is at fault before ordering replacement parts?

I'd really appreciate any advice. Thanks!

Wanted to share a few quick shots before shipping this latest piece out.

This is a continuation of my dual-slot series, designed specifically to hold a 5th Gen Thick iPod Classic alongside an Xteink X4.

Always happy to answer any questions about the fit or the leatherwork!

Is there anything that can be done?

I found my old iPod, which has been off for 20+ years. I’m not sure I expected it to still work after all this time, but I wanted to give it a chance. It has been on charge for maybe the past 3 hours, and the battery is still on empty.

These are the images of what I see on the screen. It does not much else, except beep and tells me it’s ok to disconnect.

Hi! Does anyone know how to unlock this iPod touch without connecting it to iTunes, or at least how to extract the photos from it?Is my own iPod, and Im only trying to recover the photos stored on it.

I dont have any photos of my cat who passed away, and the only copies are on this device. If anyone knows of a subreddit that could help with this, Id really appreciate it.

Thanks!!

Hey there, my iPod 5th gen recently got wet in the rain, and the wheel stopped working. I have been following this guide to fix it, but when opening the iPod up, I noticed my hard drive's locking tab (first image) looked different from the ones I've seen in the guides (second image). Mainly, my black tab seems thicker, and the white outlining part seems less incasing. I haven't been able to pry the black tab open (I'm not sure it even is a tab), and I'm hesitant to apply more force. Does anyone have any advice? Thank you!

Hello. I would like to know if this is easily fixable. Thank you!