I’ve had a 5th generation 30GB (video) iPod since August ’06. I’ve never had a problem with it until two weeks ago. I plugged it into a family member’s USB cord to charge it on the computer for a few minutes before I left home. The USB cord was Griffin brand (I think, but I know it wasn’t Apple). A message popped up a few minutes later that said, “your iPod needs to be reformatted to work with Windows. Do you want to reformat?” And I clicked “no”. After I removed my iPod to my dismay my full iPod had been reformatted anyway! Then I plugged it into my laptop with a proper Apple cord and iTunes told me it was corrupted and needed to be restored. I clicked restore, it went through all the stages, told me it was complete, and after the iPod restarted it asked me to restore it again – the restore loop of death.

So I reset it. I reformatted it. I (tried to) restore it. I remapped the network path to I:, and then M: when that didn’t work. I retried in numerous USB ports, I uninstalled and reinstalled the latest iTunes. I ran diagnostics tests on my iPod, EXCEPT for the scan HDD because apparently that test doesn’t exist on my iPod. Then I did the scan on my computer and it was apparently error free. My iPod doesn’t exhibit any weird sounds by the way, when it’s starting or anything and nothing seems loose in it. After trying all these things a hundred times I got frustrated and hit the bottom backside of the iPod against a wooden desk. When I plugged it into my computer again it finally allowed me to restore it. I was a happy camper… it let me rename my iPod and everything. But when I tried to put music on, it would copy one or two songs and then give me an error -69 from iTunes. I had to disconnect the iPod and reconnect to try to move two songs. Usually I got a -69 but once a -53. The sync didn’t work properly so I uninstalled/reinstalled iTunes again. Nothing. So then I downloaded SharePod and MediaMonkey and they wouldn’t transfer my songs either. My computer-savvy boyfriend also worked on it for a total of 7 hours and couldn’t get it working either.

What could be the problem with my iPod?! Is it my hard drive? Can it be fixed? What should I do with it now? I have a suspicion that the non-official USB cord (the Griffin one) messed it up permanently. Have you heard of non-Apple cords corrupting iPods???

Thanks so much.