IPod Classic Freezes

Question

I have had the new iPod classic for about 3 months now.  Its primary use is for my car.  It will freeze in the middle of me listening to a song, other times it will just reset will I'm the middle of a song.  Is this common? I was told at the genius bar that its because i have too much music on there {only about 10 gb free}, I thought that was the whole point of having a 160gb iPod.

Answer 1

You're correct, the point of a 160Gb iPod is to store a large Library. However, all hard drives tend to get slow or confused when almost full up (It appears to a be a quirk of computing - I usually fill my paper notebooks to the brim!) and 10Gb is not very much to work with. (I'm getting close to full on my Classic, only 13.5Gb remaining).
Perhaps you could give some thought to how to reduce the space being used. There are various methods.
Remove any junk
Remove any songs that you don't like (even if you don't count them as junk)
Remove any other media that is not to your taste, such as videos, audiobooks,  Podcasts and pictures. (Not album artwork, but the photos synced from your computer)
Consider whether you can reduce the Bit Rate used for your songs. If your main use is in the car, then storing songs in .wav format, or even in Bit Rates above 128Kbps may not be the best use of your iPod's space. You could mix and match, by having casual listening songs at 128Kbps and serious listening songs at 256Kbps if that suits you
Consider the use of Smart Playlists to automatically remove and add songs to your iPod at each Sync. See the paragraph below
A combination of the above
One example of the use of Smart Playlists is to create ones that remove a song (from the Playlist) once it has been played, and not put it back into the Playlist until a set time has passed, and then Sync selected Playlists, artists, albums etc. etc. So any song recently played could be removed from the iPod at a subsequent Sync and any songs then due back on the iPod would be put back at that Sync. Why waste space storing songs that you have heard recently but don't want to hear again for a while? It's even possible to leave selected recently played songs on the iPod for (example, two weeks) and then remove them from the iPod for - let's say, six months, while removing others straight away. Using this method, you let iTunes do the housework for you. You simply set the rules.
I have a master Smart Playlist that looks at five other Smart Playlists. Those Playlists in turn are filled from:
A Smart Playlist that has my favourite songs, provided they haven't been played for 165 days
Songs I've rated as 2 stars, provided they haven't been played for 14 months
Songs I've rated as 3 stars, provided they have't been played for 7 months
...and some other stuff.
I play it in shuffle songs mode, in my car, all the time and I never get bored by hearing the same thing too often.
One caveat... I would recommend frequent Syncs of the iPod with its iTunes, in order that iTunes can perform that ghastly housework stuff and keep your iPod clean and tidy, thus improving its performance.
Plenty of experienced users here will be able to help you create Smart Playlists if you haven't yet mastered them.
Food for thought, I hope.