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*** 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. ***

The original post is below:

Before I start to ramble, I’d like to save people using an iPod and iTunes (on Windows XP) some pain by mentioning that the iTunes dialog…

“Attempting to copy to the disk [iPod name] failed. The disk could not be read from or written to.”

…is (or, may be) misleading. Do not reformat your iPod or throw out your cable until you read this post.

Apple is justifiably famous for the enviable design of, well, everything it does. I’m an ex-serial-Mac owner and a current iPod owner, yet I feel I’m keenly aware of the Apple brand-loyalty magic operating on my inner consumer.

I questioned my rationality when I tossed and turned for nights over whether to buy a shiny black MacBook even though it’s $200 more expensive than an equivalently configured white MacBook. Talk about being drawn to the dark side. Couple that with my complete lack of a problem to solve — casa del Brainsnorkel already has six computers to share among its five occupants.

iTunes has its critics and defenders. As you can see, I’m conditioned to play the role of Apple apologist. However, with iTunes I have gone from being a detractor (before I owned an iPod) to accepting (once I owned an iPod) to my current state: annoyed.

The event that took me from accepting to annoyed was when I encountered the dialog above. From the text you can’t tell what you might have to do to resolve the problem, but it’s clearly something to do with the iPod’s disk. It’s two seemingly well-thought out sentences that seem very specific, but are actually quite ambiguous. The phrase “could not be read from or written to” suffers particularly badly from the English convention of interpreting the word “or” as a logical “and.” I know writing good error messages is hard, I assumed the best and let my problem isolation skills run wild.

I encountered this message after buying Madonna’s latest album on the iTunes music store.

I purchased the album on my main home PC, and copied the files onto my Internet-accessible Fedora server as I’d put my laptop (my iPod-syncing PC) away.

As a point of reference — earlier in the evening, I’d stumbled on an Ancient Beatbox/Sheila Chandra MP3 I’d purchased years ago from E-music and had copied it straight off the old PC onto the laptop’s iTunes.

Yesterday I copied Madonna to my laptop and listened to the album in iTunes.

I plugged in my iPod and tried to sync. Pop – up came “Attempting to copy to the disk [iPod name] failed. The disk could not be read from or written to.”

Huh?

Checking my suspicion that the iPod had actually managed to sync and iTunes was lying to me I found that the Ancient Beatbox MP3 had made it to the iPod, but the Itunes Music Store Madonna album was not present.

I ran a disk scan over the iPod and it came up clear. I rebooted the laptop. I reset the iPod. I promised never to make fun of Kabbalah again. Nothing worked. Apple recommended reinstalling iTunes and messing with re-installing the iPod, but I just didn’t believe I had to go that far given that the iPod and iTunes were working normally — except for popping the error dialog when I updated the iPod.

I compared the file properties of the tracks on the Madonna album with other syncing files, and found that the Madonna tracks were set to read-only. This was probably a side-effect of traveling via the Fedora server. I set them to be writeable and suddenly I could sync again with iTunes.

So “Attempting to copy to the disk [iPod name] failed. The disk could not be read from or written to.” is sometimes iTunes’ way of trying to tell you that some of your music files might not be writeable and syncing won’t work until you fix this.

So what’s wrong with this? Let me count the ways:

1. The error dialog wasn’t just ambiguous, it was the opposite of helpful.
2. According to the Apple site I should have gone through a process that includes reinstalling iTunes and reformatting the iPod to isolate the problem. Ouch!
3. Surely iTunes could have copied the files to the iPod anyway. Why does it need write access to the files to read them?

I think iTunes is badly in need of some investment at Apple.

Here are some ideas for new development:

Why is “subscribe to podcast” in the Advanced menu and not in the File menu with the other import options? Who uses the visualiser and why does it get its own menu? Why does iTunes take 100% of my CPU for downloading podcasts? Why does the status text spend 90% of its time displaying the result of my last iPod update when I want to know about what’s playing? When will calendar items sync properly over the International Date Line?

I think iTunes is being treated like the cash cow it is: it ain’t broke enough to risk fixing it.

*** 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 ***

An update from nklivio in the comments which won’t help me – but looks very useful for Shuffle users:

Same problem with my shuffle…disk cannot be read or written within iTunes. But I am once again able to place music on my iPod with this workaround…

1. download the iPod updater and restore settings, deleting everything.
2. Install and re-run iTunes to setup the iPod initially. Do not apply any settings or upload music.
3. Show Apple the middle-finger and REMOVE iTunes completely.
4. Install Winamp (Deluxe free version) and the iPod plugin ml_ipod (from here: http://www.mlipod.com/)
5. Go into the Media Libray (or hit alt+l), the iPod should be showing up under devices, and right click to set options.
6. Add music to winamp’s library and drag and drop to the iPod

it worked for me…my once thought useless iPod is working great again!