Apple genius not helpful, maybe posters will answer my questions

Question

I recently went to my local Apple Store to talk to a 'Genius' about my 80gb ipod classic that will not sync more than 200 songs before freezing. My 'Genius' asked if I had a Mac or PC at home and I said PC and without missing a beat he smugly suggested that my PC might have a 'bad driver' that corrupted either the software or hard drive of my ipod. He promptly told me that I can either buy an refurbished ipod of the same model for a discounted price or buy another, newer model with 10% off with the trade-in of my corrupted ipod then sent me off angry that I just wasted almost an hour waiting after my appointment time.
My question is in three parts. If you only want to answer one that is fine.
A.) If it was a bad driver that caused the corruption on the ipod, how can I avoid this issue in the future if I chose to purchase another Apple brand Mp3 player? Just by keeping up with driver updates and avoiding sites that might contain malware?
B.) The ipod started acting up on my last pc, which I dropped on a brick floor pretty hard and went on questionable sites on. But I've since gotten a newer model laptop pc with tons of space and the ipod is still acting the same way. There is no corrupted warning when I plug it in, it just will not sync all of my library and after syncing a couple gigs the screen changes from the 'syncing' screen to the 'connected' screen and itunes freezes. Then I cannot eject the ipod through itunes or even through the windows 'safely remove' feature. This is on the new laptop. What does this mean??! Corrupted software or hard drive??
C.) Has anyone had a positive experience with an Apple genius? My experience was very horrible and the genius was a jerk. Is this common?

Answer 1

From your description my first concern would be for the health of the iPod's hard drive. <hr>
*iPod Diagnostics*
Take your iPod and place your right thumb on the centre SELECT button and your left on the top MENU button. Press down both thumbs for about 6 seconds until your iPod reboots. Immediately move your left thumb around to the rewind button |<< on the left and hold this down together with SELECT for a further 6 seconds. Your iPod should now switch into Diagnostic Boot mode. Press MENU for *Manual Test*, then select *IO > HardDrive > HDSMARTData* to reveal your stats. For comparison here are mine for my 2 year old 6th Generation Classic:
Retracts: 889
Reallocs: 12
Pending Sectors: 0
PowerOn Hours: 2202
Start/Stops: 894
Temp: Current 24c
Temp: Min 10c
Temp: Max 50c
Take a note of your results. When finished press *SELECT & MENU* for 6 seconds to reset the iPod again.
With modern disc drives sectors are no longer marked bad by a disc scan, if the SMART firmware detects a sector it has trouble accessing it will attempt to invisibly reallocate it to a spare area of the disc.
Note that I've only 12 remapped sectors and none pending. To help explain what the numbers mean here is an extract from the Wikipedia S.M.A.R.T. article:
*Reallocated Sectors Count*
Count of reallocated sectors. When the hard drive finds a read/write/verification error, it marks this sector as "reallocated" and transfers data to a special reserved area (spare area). This process is also known as remapping, and "reallocated" sectors are called remaps. This is why, on modern hard disks, "bad blocks" cannot be found while testing the surface – all bad blocks are hidden in reallocated sectors. However, as the number of reallocated sectors increases, the read/write speed tends to decrease. The raw value normally represents a count of the number of bad sectors that have been found and remapped. Thus, the higher the attribute value, the more sectors the drive has had to reallocate.
*Pending sector count*
Number of "unstable" sectors (waiting to be remapped, because of read errors). If an unstable sector is subsequently written or read successfully, this value is decreased and the sector is not remapped. Read errors on a sector will not remap the sector (since it might be readable later); instead, the drive firmware remembers that the sector needs to be remapped, and remaps it the next time it's written.
Large numbers of Reallocs or Pending Sectors would suggest your drive is failing and that you may need to repair or replace your iPod. Check your stats after another attempt to update your iPod. If the numbers increase that again points to hard drive failure. While it won't be good news at least you'll know it isn't some random software problem and you can decide what to do next.
<hr>
Turning back to your post:
A.) While an incorrect driver/driver conflict might cause the wrong data to be written to the iPod, hence corrupting it, if you then update the drivers, remove conflicting devices etc. then it should be possible to restore the device on subsequent occasions. A USB device infecting virus is unlikely to actually disrupt the normal operation of an iPod, even if it manages to add viral code onto the device, as this code will target the Windows operating system. Obviously avoiding contact with malware and impacts with the envionment will be a "good thing" for both your computer and your iPod.
B.) Software corruption should be cured with a Restore. Hardware problems will only tend to get worse. Your symptoms & history would suggest problems with the iPod's hard drive, but hardware issues on the source drive could also produce a similar effect. If the iPod gets a clean bill of health then check the laptop's drives using the Windows disk scanning tools.
C.) I've not had any contact with Apple Geniuses but I would like to think that your experience is atypical. I've certainly heard better reports about Apple's support than say PC World.
tt2