I banged my IPOD on my hard floor thrice, I had to !!
All these while, I used to think that IPODS can never go wrong !! After all, ipods were the coolest gadgets around. My 20GB Ipod stopped all of a sudden. No I didnot drop it .. neither did I try to boot it with linux !!
All I used to do with my ipod was to play songs.. yes just mp3 songs loaded using itunes. I get this stupid triangle with a folder icon and a big exclamation mark !!
Researched on the internet … including the apple website .. resetted, restarted and what not …. the thing wont boot. It will not even show up on my pc. The best thing about internet is that you are not alone … somewhere in this world there is atleast one unfortunate soul who has faced a similar problem as you and has posted a question in some forum asking for help !! And if you are not so lucky, there is one more person who somehow found the fix for the problem !! And so googling for a solution, I found a blog where this guy had listed the working solution and here it is …
Restart your ipod .. the hard disk will spin and then will stop and then again start … the moment it starts … just BAM !! Bang in on a hard surface … if required multiple times.. and your ipod will work !!!
Crazy !! I thought.. my ipod was just in a comma … I cannot kill it !! But to my surpise I saw loads of comments applauding on his wonderful discovery !! “It works” most of them said !!
So I started off by banging it on my carpet … it didnot work… then wrapped the ipod with a soft cloth and banged once more .. didnot work. Then I did what I would have never thought I could do … I mercilessly went BAM !!! BAM !! BAM !! in perfect Emeril style on my hard floor !!
Did it work ? No !! (one line edited here) no more hard disks this time 
Time for an ipod nano !!
June 4th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
You, sir, are a total moron. Who the hell in their wildest dreams bangs a $300 device on the ground?
June 4th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
The point is that it was no more a $300 ipod .. it was a dead ipod .. so I had nothing to lose then !! I m trying to find the article where i got the advice .. while searching now .. found this .. check the comments on
http://digg.com/apple/iPod_click_of_doom_solved_by_intrepid_owner
Cut and pasting a few:
don’t throw your iPod off of a building to get it to work. I have the same iPod, two of them actually, and both of them got the click of death. All you have to do is put a towel down on a hard surface (to protect the outside of the iPod), cup the iPod in your palm so that it runs the length of your hand, and being careful to align the iPod so the metal backing will hit evenly, bang it down onto the surface hard once or twice.
by SoulMaster2 on 5/31/06
[comment buried, show commenthide comment] + 10 diggs Yeah people on the Mac forums recommended that I drop
July 17th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
This is no joke. People in the Rio Karma forums have been doing this for years. Those dual-platter discs sometimes get stuck and a jolt can un-stick them. It’s a simple fix on those mini-hard drives (mostly Hitachi Travelstar drives) that works about 80% of the time it’s tried.