Bad Sectors, Frequent Resets, and Useless Restores

Question

Hello all,
After much effort to restore my iPod back to its original happy state, it has refused to emerge from its purgatory. Right now, this is its status: iPod refuses to sync more than 1.45GB of data (it has 80GB capacity), iPod refuses to restore properly (problems such as various errors, -1418, -40, -50 are not resolved), upon proper ejection, iPod resets itself before the timer runs out.
I have attempted restoration from various states, Disk Mode, Regular Mode. I have attempted to repair the disk with the disk check utility. Nothing has changed.
And here's some more monkey's to throw in the barrel. Right now I do not live conveniently near an Apple Store, Santa Barbara. Also, I will be leaving the country soon, to Japan.
Here are my questions. What, if anything, may I do to resolve this issue, by myself? If that isn't the case, most likely, would going to an Apple store be troublesome if I had to go to a different city, San Francisco? (with a receipt from the retailer I purchased the iPod, Amazon.com) And, more ludicrous I can assume, would I be able to take care of this issue while in Japan, if the repair cannot be done in a timely fashion?
Sorry for the length and complexity of this issue.

Answer 1

These proceedures might work for you. For best results it might pay to disconnect any unnecessary USB devices & power-cycle your computer before starting to eliminate potential driver clashes.
*Checking hard-drive for errors*
Hold Menu+Select on your iPod for about 6 seconds until it resets, then hold Menu+Play as soon as the Apple logo appears, again for about 6 seconds to put the machine in disk mode. Connect to your computer, closing iTunes if it opens. Browse *My Computer* and right-click on the drive for the iPod, click Properties, then click Tools. Under Error-checking, click *Check Now*. Under Check disk options, select *Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors* (Optional - takes ages but a good idea if you've reason to suspect physical damage). Click Start. Mac users should run *Disk Utility / Repair Disk* for the equivalent process. This should find and correct any errors in the logical & physical structures of your iPod's hard drive. Once these have been fixed you can reset the iPod (hold Menu+Select ) and should stand a better chance of a successful restore.
Once you've restored your iPod don't rush to dump all the data back exactly as it was before. Complex smart playlists can sometimes trigger constant reboots or dumping of the iPod's library. In addition, larger transfers can fail leaving data in an inconsistent state. Try this technique for populating the iPod in stages.
*Break up large transfers*
In iTunes select the menu item *File... New Smart Playlist*. Change the first drop-down box to Playlist, the next to is and the next to Music. Tick against *Limit to*, type in say 10, then change the drop-down to GB, and set the last drop-down to artist. When you click OK you can enter a name for the playlist, e.g. Transfer. Now sync this playlist to your iPod rather than your entire library. When the sync is complete disconect the iPod & check that it can play the music you've downloaded to it. Now modify the rule ( *File... Edit playlist* ) to increase the size by your chosen amount, then sync and repeat. You can experiment with different size increments, if it doesn't work just choose something a bit smaller until it works each time. Before long you should have all your music on your iPod. Once that's done you can move on to other media such as podcasts, videos, photos etc. and put back any playlists that you want on the iPod.
tt2