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As reported earlier, I’m having an iPod problem. I’m not trying to beat a dead horse, I’m just trying to isolate the cause of failure to see if open heart surgery and a new hard disk will be a waste of money.

The evidence so far comprises:

1. A mysterious error dialog from iTunes
2. A clean bill of health from chkdsk
3. A message that appears in the Windows XP System Event Log

I decided to look at the Windows XP event log message.

According to Microsoft’s KB244780, the error 51 — “An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk2\D during a paging operation.” is usually to do with disk I/O and memory management, except that:

However, the computer may log this event message when it loads images from a storage device, reads and writes to locally mapped files or to any file[...]

So it sounds like it’s a general I/O error. Luckily KB244780 describes how to interpret the raw data that comes along with the logged message.


0000: 04 00 68 00 01 00 b6 00 ..h...¶.
0008: 00 00 00 00 33 00 04 80 ....3..?
0010: 2d 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 -.......
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 02 36 0d 00 00 00 00 ..6.....
0028: 33 4f 00 00 00 00 00 00 3O......
0030: ff ff ff ff 03 00 00 00 ÿÿÿÿ....
0038: 40 00 00 c4 02 00 00 00 @..Ä....
0040: 00 20 0a 12 80 02 20 40 . ..?. @
0048: 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 ........
0050: 00 00 00 00 58 66 6f 86 ....Xfo?
0058: 00 00 00 00 b0 bc d7 86 ....°¼×?
0060: 00 00 00 00 01 9b 06 00 .....?..
0068: 2a 00 00 06 9b 01 00 00 *...?...
0070: 80 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ?.......
0078: f0 00 0b 00 00 00 00 0b ð.......
0080: 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 ........
0088: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........


What this means to say, in little-endian weirdness, is:


0000: Write operation, No retries, 0x68 byte dump, strings=0x0001, offset to device name=00b6
0008: NTSTATUS code = 80040033 (Error 51)
0010: Unique error=0000012d, NTSTATUS final status=00000000
0018: Seqno=00000000, io control code=00000000
0020: Byte offset to bad sector = 000000000d360200
0028: Tick count when error occurred = 0000000000004f33
0030: port number=ffffffff, error flags=03, unused=000000
0038: scsi status/srb status: 0x40 (undefined)/0x00 (no status yet)
...blah blah blah...


Unless my error-51-ese is slipping, somewhere around byte 221,643,264, of my approximately 60,000,000,000 byte iPod, there’s a sector that can’t be written for an undefined reason. 221 megabytes from the start of the drive is well into the iPod data storage partition, and past the mysterious non-partition 39 megabytes of “firmware” at the beginning of the iPod’s drive.

That doesn’t seem too bad… maybe I can partition past the location of the problem? What’s 200 megs or abandoned hard disk space between friends?

I then looked at some other Event Log error 51 messages. If they are to be believed, I also have a read error at a sector about 57meg, a write error at about 158meg, and a whole bunch of location-less write errors. Given more time, I’d go and dig out the physical drive geometry and work out if these errors occurred in similar physical locations as you might expect with a physical anomaly like a head crash, or internal dust bunny roadkill.

Finding this link, and lacking an easily found method of messing with partitions on the drive in Windows XP, I’m going to try messing with it under Linux once all else has failed.

While looking for a means of re-partitioning my iPod past the suspected problem area (Windows XP disk manager refuses to play “delete the partition” with me!) - I found this iPod diagnostics page. Basically, the process is to reset the iPod holding down the select and play buttons then when the Apple logo comes up, hold the select and left buttons to enter a menu of diagnostic tests. Most of the error and pass codes from the diagnostics are obvious, but some like the USB result are completely opaque to me.

My results?

Nothing that indicts or clears the hard disk:

USB test:
ID=0×22FA05 [Odd numbers bad! Aren't they?]

HDD Scan: Pass

HDD R/W: Pass

HDD SMART Data:
Retracts: 4 [Times the heads were retracted during an [unexpected] power-off event]
Reallocs: 0 ["Bad blocks" reallocated]
Pending Sectors: 0
Poweron hours: 38
Start/Stops: 199

HD Info (HDD SPecs):
TOSHIBA MK6006GAH
FirmwareRev:BY002A
HDSN: [...]
TOTAL LBA: 117210240
Total Size: 55GB
Temp Current: 29C
Min 9C Max 55C

At the end of all that it looks like there is nothing wrong with the hard disk according to diagnostics, yet there are read and write problems during operation. Beyond the partitioning stunt, I’m running out of diagnostic methods.

That extortionate Apple repair service is looking like a pretty good option.

Actually, it’s life. But not as we know it.

An intermittent iPod problem has turned into a constant problem. I’ve spent a few days attempting to isolate and/or fix the problem, with no luck. I have disk checked, restored, formatted, and factory-reset the iPod numerous times. The poor thing has been plugged into and associated with one Mac OS machine and five XP machines, running three different versions of iTunes. Disk checks don’t find any errors.

All computers tested are capable of transferring non-audio data to the iPod including random, non-music files and the play list structure, but updating audio content elicits the error message “Attempting to copy to the disk [iPod name] failed. The disk could not be read from or written to.”

Time to consider my alternatives:

1. Cost of service on a 3-month out-of-warranty 60G iPod Photo: AU$388.45
2. Replacement iPod plan: AU$350 (US$249 + US$6.95 shipping and handling)
3. New 60G iPod Video with free engraving and delivery: $399.00AU$598 (oh yeah, Australian pricing)

I don’t have a lot of confidence that #2 is an option for Australia. In any case, Apple may choose to replace your iPod with a working second hand or reconditioned iPod.

I think my best strategy is to keep plugging away at diagnosis.

New theme!

This theme is a modified version of Safety, originally from here, and entered in a competition here.

Tweaks will continue in coming days. If you find any problems tell me!

I know it’s old, but for me Röyksopp deserve a lifetime achievement award for setting the bar high in the field of network diagramming. Behold the future: UML (ok, maybe not UML) with music notation.

Ok, I admit it. I’m a Youtube addict.

I blame FDL.

*** Update: I was wrong in my problem isolation. The problem is actually to do with an intermittent error reported on the iPod’s disk, and the steps taken below to resolve the issue worked because of luck, and not because of setting files to be writeable. The iTunes message appears to have been partially accurate. See also this post for further adventures in problem isolation. ***

The message that I find in the System log in Windows XP’s Event Viewer (repeated every minute for minutes or hours at a time) is this:

Source: Disk
Severity: Warning
Error ID: 51

An error was detected on device Device-Harddisk1-D during a paging operation.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Harddisk0 is usually the C drive, and the iPod is Harddisk1.

I’m trying an iPod restore. I’ll update when I get near my wall power unit so I can complete the iPod restore process.

*** Update: Restoring the iPod has resulted in an empty-looking iPod, and a complete inability to copy music to it due to the “Attempting to copy to the disk [iPod name] failed. The disk could not be read from or written to.” error dialog. I guess I’ll be phoning Apple tomorrow. ***

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My mother just reminded me of a shared moment of absurdity during my childhood.

When I was younger I was at the Mullumbimby Show when an ambulance arrived at top speed with lights flashing and sirens blaring. The crowd buzzed with concern.

Someone got on the public address microphone and calmed the crowd with “Everyone please make way for the ambulance. The Bullet-Proof Woman has been shot.”

I’m sure the hundreds of people I remember laughing at that moment carry the same guilt as me to this day.

Apparently she made a full recovery. I don’t know if the name of her act was revised.

After a long silence, Fafblog stirs.

Other signs of apocalypse?

• The date here is now the 7th, but it’s still 6/6/(0)6 in the US.
• The Medium Lobster can’t have complete control of the number of bloglines subscribers, can he?