Ok. This is starting to get annoying.

Question

I have had my silver 80gb iPod Classic for quite awhile now and I have LOVED it. It's treated me extremely well. I've never once had a problem getting music onto it, editing anything on it, absolutely no problems what-so-ever.
Until recently.
I plugged my iPod into my laptop the other day and was editing music when out of nowhere, my iTunes said that it could not read the disk. I thought that was strange, so I went in to my taskbar and manually ejected it (iTunes froze when I attempted to eject and I had to close iTunes using Task Manager). It ejected normally so I unplugged it, thinking nothing of the screen...until I actually LOOKED and it said, "NO MUSIC"
I had just spent an hour editing and putting music on my iPod, in addition to already having 13,000 songs from a previous library. How in the world could there be no music on it? So I plugged it back in and iTunes told me that I needed to restore it to factory settings because it could not be read.
So, I re-installed iTunes.
I got the same problem once again...so I manually ejected it again and scrolled through the entire menu, praying that it was just a malfunction that could be solved with some turning on and off. No dice. I held my breath and hit the restore button, praying again, that it would be a fairly easy fix.
I was able to restore the iPod and put it back to the original settings, eject it, set all the settings, plug it back in and start to try and restore what I could of playlists and such in iTunes.
Then, I started putting music back on it. Slowly. I had already put about 200 songs on it and had ejected it just to make sure the music was getting where it was supposed to go. I rested it for a little bit, hoping that maybe it just needed some cool down time. When I plugged it back in, it was fine, it went about loading my library fine....then iTunes froze and told me there was an error with my iPod again. So once again, I manually ejected it and the message "NO MUSIC" was on the side panel.
I know it's not an ejection problem. I ALWAYS eject it from the taskbar or iTunes. I never yank it out of the USB without shutting it down...although I have wanted to...especially within the last few days.
There's no problem with iTunes. It works just fine if my iPod isn't within a 10 foot radius of my laptop. I can get it plugged in and start loading songs on it just fine at first, but then at some point, an error occurs and it wipes my entire iPod. I virus scanned my computer with three different programs, I re-installed iTunes, I (again) restored my iPod to factory settings...nothing is working!
I've plugged it in to three different computers. It freezes and does it to all three. I finally had it working tonight, I got over 2000 songs on it and then when I plugged it into this laptop and uploaded another 1000 songs, it decided to freeze on a random song and when I unplugged it, it said "NO MUSIC." I looked at the properties and the songs aren't hidden...they're GONE. I've never had this kind of problem with it on any computer I've ever plugged it into. Ever!
I'm at my wits end here. I'm seriously tempted to throw it in the trash if it doesn't start working correctly.

Answer 1

*Check iPod hard-drive for errors*
Hold Select+Menu on the iPod for about 6 seconds until it resets, then hold Select+Play as soon as the Apple logo appears, again for about 6 seconds to put the machine in disk mode. Open iTunes and in the Sync tab of the preferences menu check *Disable automatic syncing of all iPhones & iPods*. Now connect your iPod to the computer, wait until it connects, then close iTunes. 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.
And if that still doesn't help try Erase your iPod - The Super Fix for most iPod Problems. Basically a low level format of the iPod’s hard drive to get around whatever problems are stopping iTunes from playing nicely with it.
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 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, playlists etc.