Someone passed me an ipod mini wich isn't working properly. My first guess was the hard drive, specially because a scan from the ipod menu would hang on 80%. I passed the drive to a PC (it's just a Seagate microdrive), and it works just fine after being formatted. However, the ipod won't recognize the drive properly, when I inquire the SerialNumber it just shows garbage. but on a USB CF reader it works just fine (have already done a low level formatting).

When I install this drive on my PDA (dell axim), it's not recognized, so I'm a little bit confused as I think these drives should be "generic".

Is there any special firmware for this kind of drives? How can I know if the drive has some physical failure? Is there anything I can do to get the drive working on the ipod assuming it's in good condition?

Regards

This is probably an "ATA only" microdrive, and your PDA requires "Compact Flash" emulation mode.

OK,

That sounds reasonable; this can explain why the PC reads it and the PDA not; but why does the ipod where it came from report the disk as faulty? The serial number appears scrambled. Should I suspect for a hw problem on the ipod or might it be the drive? Seagate online tools also shows a scrambled number.

I have another very similar ipod which was also failing and a chkdsk /f /x fixed many problems, now the drive has a few bad sectors but the Serial number shows well and the ipod recognizes it well, what can I do with the other drive? Does anyone have some info about firmware for Seagate ST1 drives?

Regards