"Attempting to copy to the disc "Bill's" Ipod failed. "

Question

Pop up reads "Attempting to copy to the disk "Bill's Ipod" failed. The disk could not be read from or written to"
This message continues to come up each time I attempt to move my music library from I tunes to my new Ipod Nano.
Only a few songs will move before stopping and displaying the popup.
Any help out there? Thank you!

Answer 1

Right out of the box I encountered the dreaded read/write error with my new iPod Color, which I received the same day Apple announced the new iPod Video (sheesh!). I, too, tried everything from buying a new cable (FireWire), to resets, to firmware checks, even at one point downgrading iTunes to a version prior to 5.01. I even thought I got a defective iPod because nothing would sync after the error came up. What I finally noticed was that it always erred on the same track(s). To see if this might be the problem in your case, try selecting another sorting criteria for your library. For example, if you usually sort your songs by album title, try highlighting the song title column instead (just make sure that whatever way you sort the list it is NOT with the same criteria as you had last time you encountered a sync problem). As you re-establish the sync operation, watch the titles as they sync. If it looks like it is working again, it is because the iPod is no longer trying to read/copy/write the same faulty track (at least until it encounters it again in your library). Keep watching, though, and write down any title that precedes yet another read/write error. Next, delete the title immediately preceding the error from your iTunes library. (Note: It is not enough to uncheck the corrupt track, it will still produce the sync error until you remove it entirely from your library.) Eject the iPod and try again to re-sync. Repeat this process until all the corrupt or incompatible tracks have been identified and eliminated.
BTW, the closest thing I could find in Apple's documentation is a support database article, ID: 301267. The article is for people who encounter the "-36" error while attempting to sync, but the part about corrupt or incompatible tracks apparently applies to just about any read/write failure. If Apple had simply bothered to include a section on sync troubleshooting in the user manual or iPod tutorial, perhaps we wouldn't all be developing migraines right now…. Hope this helps!