Any Help out there??? 5G 30gig Video Ipod

Question

After a little over two weeks of working with this thing, it just won't come out of the loop. It first started after I changed computers. I had my full library on both computers but was only synced to one of them. While trying to sync to the other computer to make it my main itunes library, I got an option to restore which I did and everything was fine. I did update to iTunes 7.0.2 and iPod 1.2.1 and still everything was fine. Until ... I tried to upload purchased music and videos just after Christmas since I got an iTunes gift card. When I synced then, I got some of my music on it but not all of it after messing with it a bit and doing another restore. I got brave a couple days later and tried to re-sync it to get the rest of my music and the videos to download and got into a recovery mode loop.
When I turn my iPod on, it says connect to your computer. Use iTunes to restore. When I plug it in to iTunes, I get a message that says it's in recovery mode and needs to be restored. I restore and the same message comes right back up again and again and again and .... I've tried all the 5 R's many times, I've tried changing the drive letter, I've tried resetting numerous times, I've tried letting the battery run down and charging it at the wall. I've tried to change the path under disk management but it just comes up as unreadable. I've tried deleting and reinstalling itunes several times. I've tried using the install disk it came with to use the prior version of both the ipod and itunes. I've tried using different computers and different user accounts. Nothing is working.
I did read a thread about formatting the ipod drive and tried that. I did get it to format a few days ago. Hooked it back into itunes, restored again and it did come up and start loading my music. But .. in the middle of that upload, I got a corrupted file message which it let me skip over and then I got a read/write error message and it wouldn't go any farther and went back into the recovery mode loop. Now, when I try to re-format it again, it will not format. Under my computer, I right click the drive, wait until format comes up, left click on format and nothing. I also tried to format under the start and run .. the box pops up saying to hit enter to continue. It sits for a few minutes and then disappears.
I've had this thing for just at a year and have not had any problems with it until now. I'm a bit worried about the drive being trashed since it just won't format. Any and every suggestion would really, really be appreciated!!!

Answer 1

Pretty much the ipod is going to need to be repair. I would suggest taking it into the nearest Apple Store because they give you a 10% discount for older ipods towards a new ipod.