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Monday, March 17, 2008

Issues with upgrading a 3G iPod with Flash

A few folks who have tried to upgrade their 3G iPod with Flash have run into a pesky problem where the restore process does not finish and the iPod constantly restarts. Reader Andreas has put together a handy troubleshooting guide for this. It will be archived under "General iPod".

15 Comments:

Anonymous said...: On step 11, it says to put the CF card back in the ipod and run ipodwizard. then, in step 14, it says to instert the card back in the ipod again. are we NOT supposed to take the CF card out of the reader while re-writing the firmware? or is it just a typo?; March 22, 2008 7:33 AM
Andreas said...: You're right, that's a typo/mistake on my behalf. Sorry for that. Just ignore that part in step 14.

Ipodwizard will only write to a connected ipod and not to a CF card in a reader.
You will definitely have to put the CF card back into the ipod in step 11.

As I stated in the notes, this was only necessary because my 3rd gen ipod wouldn't even restart in Disk Mode after the initial restore. Might be different with other ipods, but if you have a card reader just use that.; March 22, 2008 12:58 PM
Tom said...: Hi, awesome article. I was able to get the custom bootloader to work, but I'm replacing a dead drive with flash so I don't have a working backup from the hd.

Instead, in iPodWizard I'm trying to load the Firmware 2.2.3 bin (Instead of the backup) and it just restarts again! What firmware version are you running? I was thinking maybe I needed an older one.; March 27, 2008 6:33 PM
Andreas said...: Thanks ;)

I was using the latest version as well. Your problem really seems to be the missing backup. Maybe you can send me a private message and send me your email ....; March 27, 2008 7:55 PM
Anonymous said...: Hi there.

You talk about a card reader. Would the 3g's diagnostick mode "USB disk" work just as well? I found I was able to interrupt the restart-flashingfirmware room with diagnostic mode and use "USB disk" function to mount the iPod.; March 29, 2008 4:33 PM
Andreas said...: I don't know and I don'T have a way to test this. But it could work.

Why don't you just try and let us know?; March 29, 2008 5:17 PM
Anonymous said...: I did manage to get my 3G working by copying the firmware from the half-dead HD to the CF card using the OS X "dd" command and the 3G ipod in diagnostic mode -> USB drive. My 3G was in the eternal loop for restart-flashingfirmware. After that it worked.

I guess that shows you can use diagnostic mode -> USB drive instead of a CF card reader. Maybe people could see if this works for them before going out to buy a CF card reader or before they ask someone for a favour.; March 31, 2008 5:28 AM
Pippo said...: @ anonymous: Please, You could explain in detail (step by step) your method using the "dd" command under osx? Many thanks.; March 31, 2008 4:01 PM
Anonymous said...: Hi guys, my disk went down the drain.
It's broken and I can't use a fw backup. Could anyone share it.
Thanks
Vincenzo

P.S.
Andreas thanks for your investigation
it has spared me a lot of time.; April 9, 2008 3:03 AM
Andreas said...: You're welcome ;)

Sent me a PM so I have you're email address ...; April 9, 2008 3:14 AM
Anonymous said...: I was able to replace my broken HD with a 4 Giga flash but I have a weird behaviour.
After I turn off and then on Ipod it can't play any song. It keeps skipping songs. Only if I reset it I'm able to play song again.

Have u guys seen a behaviour like this.
Thanks
Vincenzo; April 14, 2008 7:02 AM
goombakid said...: Great writeup!

Just like to know if there is a method of restoring a 3G iPod from a dead HD to CF. I've already ran it through recovery in iTunes. Anyone can help?

andreas, I sent you an email. Hope you can help me also; May 3, 2008 12:05 AM
goombakid said...: Thanks to Andreas, I finally got my 3G iPod alive again.

Not sure if anyone else had or is having this problem; on step 10, for me, I'd have iPodLinux working and loading the files up to about 90%, then it will give me an "error 10". I tried going on, but at step 13, iPod Wizard would not detect my iPod.

I did some seaching and found iPodLinux Manager, and used that instead of the original installer. It took some time, but it eventually loaded and got my partitions right.

At step 13, I did get the "exclamation point folder", but still got iPod Wizard to see my iPod. Got the firmware backup loaded (thanks Andreas!), and now, my 3G is alive!

So, if you're having problems @ step 10 like I have (which is probably slim to nil), you might want to try iPodLinux Manager instead.

Andreas, I couldn't have done it without your help. Thank you so much!; May 4, 2008 12:42 PM
Steve P said...: I'm trying this with a 32GB A-Data compactflash card in a 4th gen iPod Photo (originally 60GB). I was able to successfully install a SanDisk 4GB compactflash card on this some iPod with no problem -- I didn't even need to follow this procedure. But when I tried the 32GB card, I am stuck with the exclaimation folder after the reboot.

I followed this guide and it seemed to work, although I didn't get a custom startup menu in step 11 -- I just used select/play to go into disk mode. But in the end after the Write to iPod in iPodWizard, I still have the exclaimation folder.

Any ideas? Anybody else had luck getting a 32GB card to work? Am I wondering if I'm facing a different problem since I never have seen the progress bar you mention in the writeup -- just the Apple logo followed immediately by the exclaimation folder.; May 7, 2008 9:28 PM
Joseph said...: Hey Guys I’m caught between a rock and a hard spot, I replaced my iPod’s HDD with a CF card because the HDD took a turn for the worst and died so I have no resource to grab a working copy of the firmware. Can please, please someone send/ provide me with a copy? Email= Venix91@Gmail.com
Ps. Please I really don’t my investment into this adapter and card to be a waste, so please. Thank you!; June 2, 2008 4:06 PM