# Rescuing iPod nano



## semi-ambivalent (Mar 5, 2010)

I have what I think is a 2nd-gen nano (green, square-ish.) When new it was Apple formatted but when I inherited it from my son we re-formatted it on my wife's W2k machine and I could use it just fine with gtkpod.

Then, for various reasons, my son used it and intentionally re-formatted it on his Mac so I couldn't use it. Later when I tried to re-do it in the the W2k machine it said I needed a newer version of iTunes. That is not available for W2k, minimum XP.

Yesterday I had a colleague at work re-format it on his XP box as, I think, FAT32 and it still won't work with gtkpod. I was able to get some music on it but nothing would play. In a fit of pique I ran newfs_msdos on it and now it freezes my 8.0 machine if I try and mount it. Truly screwed up.

Is there a path to rescuing this? I'd hate to lose it; it's paid for.

thanks,

sa


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## teckk (Mar 15, 2010)

Not sure if I can help you but,
plug it in and issue

```
dmesg | tail
```
That will give you the device location. You may know that if you are mounting it.

```
fdisk /dev/da0
```
will give you info like the file system that is on it now. (use your parameters)

If it worked before then you may want to zero the device out with dd and then start over. Reformat it on your windows box. Be real careful with dd. Make sure you have the correct drive.

```
dd if=/dev/da0 of=zero
```
Or you may just need to issue

```
fsck_msdosfs
```
To fix the file system.
Or run checkdisk or scandisk on it from the windows box.
If it worked before with a FAT filesystem then zero it and start over. Plug it back into the windows box after zero and format it.

Good luck. Post back how you fixed it.


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## semi-ambivalent (Mar 16, 2010)

*No change*

teckk,

Thanks for posting back. I re-wrote the slice with sysinstall and added a partition. Then I plugged it into my son's Mac and had iTunes restore the system software. iTunes replaced the system software and then reformatted the storage as HFS (I love iPods, despise iTunes). So I repeated the sysinstall end of it and the Mac again only this time I told it just to re-format. It gave me the option of msdos so I picked that again and this time it stuck. But now when I plug it in and tail -f messages I get this:
	
	



```
Mar 15 19:16:55 blah kernel: uhub_reattach_port: port 5 reset failed, error=USB_ERR_TIMEOUT
Mar 15 19:16:55 blah kernel: uhub_reattach_port: device problem (USB_ERR_TIMEOUT), disabling port 5
```
endlessly.
Jeez Louise, this all used to just work. Tempted to just let the Mac do it; all the music is on the server anyway. I'll back away from it for a few days...


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## semi-ambivalent (Mar 16, 2010)

*Solved, evidently*

This morning I plugged in the nano and, how 'bout that

```
Mar 16 07:03:47 blah kernel: ugen2.2: <Apple Inc.> at usbus2
Mar 16 07:03:47 blah kernel: umass0: <Apple Inc. iPod, class 0/0, rev 2.00/0.01,
 addr 2> on usbus2
Mar 16 07:03:47 blah kernel: umass0:  SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0x0000
Mar 16 07:03:47 blah root: Unknown USB device: vendor 0x05ac product 0x1262 bus
uhub2
Mar 16 07:03:48 blah kernel: umass0:8:0:-1: Attached to scbus8
Mar 16 07:03:51 blah kernel: da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus8 target 0 lun 0
Mar 16 07:03:51 blah kernel: da0: <Apple iPod 1.62> Removable Direct Access SCSI
-0 device
Mar 16 07:03:51 blah kernel: da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
Mar 16 07:03:51 blah kernel: da0: 7583MB (1941441 4096 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T
120C)
```
I did nothing with it since my prior answer to teckk. Maybe slow electrons. I haven't tried mounting it yet since the last time I tried it froze the box and I don't have time to wait for a disk check. I'll post this and then give it a shot.


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## semi-ambivalent (Mar 16, 2010)

*Spoke too quick*

The device is detected, but that's it so far:
	
	



```
blah [105] [7] [/tmp]$ mount -t msdosfs /dev/da0s1 /media
mount_msdosfs: /dev/da0s1: No such file or directory
blah [106] [7] [/tmp]$ fdisk /dev/da0
fdisk: could not detect sector size
blah [107] [7] [/tmp]$ fsck_msdosfs /dev/da0
** /dev/da0
Invalid signature in boot block: 0000
blah [108] [7] [/tmp]$
```
I'll attempt a format and then mount, and post if the machine doesn't freeze.


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## semi-ambivalent (Mar 16, 2010)

*Still alive here*

Here's the output of sysinstall's fdisk. It looks like sysinstall is confused by the geometry because this is an 8GB nano, not a 1GB shuffle. At first I thought that 25MB bit is the home of the iPod code, but I didn't think Apple would let that be visible to disk tools at all. Figured it was on a flashable ROM or something. I'm going to do a new slice and a newfs on it but, really, that's been done before and it blows up, so I'll take it all the way. I'm using achi, could that contribute to the p1 and p2 designations?
	
	



```
Disk name:      da0                                    FDISK Partition Editor
DISK Geometry:  120 cyls/255 heads/63 sectors = 1927800 sectors (941MB)

Offset       Size(MB)        End     Name  PType       Desc  Subtype    Flags

         0          0          5        -     12     unused        0
         6         25      51205    da0p1      5    unknown        0
     51206          0      51455        -     12     unused        0
     51456        922    1941247    da0p2      5    unknown        0          
   1941248          0    1941440        -     12     unused        0
```


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## semi-ambivalent (Mar 16, 2010)

*Curiouser and...*


```
blah [127] [8] [/tmp]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0
dd: /dev/da0: Invalid argument
1+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes transferred in 0.000113 secs (0 bytes/sec)
```
and this turns up in messages
	
	



```
Mar 16 08:17:36 blah kernel: GEOM: da0: the primary GPT table is corrupt or invalid.
Mar 16 08:17:36 blah kernel: GEOM: da0: using the secondary instead -- recovery strongly advised.
```
 Enough, I'm going to work.


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