I could, however, access the iPod as a hard drive on my PC. My PC was using Windows XP Professional edition, so I wasn’t really sure what the issue was. I decided to call Apple’s tech support, and after spending a half hour on the phone with them they told me that the issue was with my computer. Funny, seeing as how I could use my friend’s iPod as a hard drive just fine on my laptop, I just could not use my own. After coming to the conclusion that Apple’s tech support sucks, I decided to find another solution.

At this point, my PC was starting to exhibit the same problems as my laptop did in the beginning – at first, the iPod would be seen as a hard drive, but then it could not be accessed. I could still bypass it by a simple trick using Windows Explorer, which I won’t go into detail with (unless someone wants me to). Now it was really getting to my nerves, as I had files on there that I really needed. Using my Windows Explorer trick I backed up those files, however another issue popped up – what about my music?

Now I was really frustrated, as I have over 30 GB of music on my iPod, and although I had most of it backed up on my computer I wasn’t completely sure I had it all. Thankfully, after a little bit of research, I found YamiPod – Yet Another iPod Manager. Using this simple (but spectacular) program, I was able to back up all my music to my computer.

After completing the backup (which took a little while, about 45 minutes to an hour), I restored the iPod to factory condition using the latest iPod firmware available through iTunes. I decided to restore it using my PC and test it on my laptop to see if it now worked as a portable hard drive again. And it did! I was extremely excited that it started working at this point, so I loaded up all my music back onto the iPod and all the backed up files. Several weeks later, its still running great with no problems.

Looks like I won’t be hooking up this iPod to any computer other than mine again (or call Apple’s tech support again)