Fixing my friends ipod but need help with crashing freezing etc probs

Question

my friend as us to fix his ipod two weeks ago as it had a sad face and was making grinding noises.
well we fix it but it is now very slow, and he says its freezing. this was after the fourth or fifth format restore as a normal itunes restore doesent work.
so afteer formating it on abuntu cus we descovered 2 partitions
it now works ... then we sync it with itunes 7.5 it crashed tried 8.0 it crashed even tried 9.25 and 10.1.
it crashed and locked the computer.
the drive is griding like mad , its slow and it wont always show up.
we think it a classic 5 g , it has a 30 gig hard drive, (post s/n later as im writing this in bed)
we got it up and running and then itunes 7.5 crashed. now it gone back to a small circle with a line which is black.
it looks like the wrong firmware keeps booting as it is suposed to be a red circle with line which is twice the size.
i know it had firmware 3.1 on it before and it eventually finds it. and works but
can someone tell me
1 where do i find the correct version of the firm ware as i think the current 1 is scrambled.
as for the hard drive it is getting hot and griding do u think i need replace it.
think s/n or model number is m????k something.
were runing out of ideas
can u help
btw my first post.

Answer 1

*Check your iPod with Diagnostics Mode*
It's possible that the iPod's hard drive is failing. Take the 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. The 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 the drive is failing and that you may need to repair or replace the iPod. Check the stats after another attempt to update the 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, e.g. replace the hard drive or the entire unit.
tt2