Entertainment For Lively Minds
IPod Classic annoyance
I've got a 120 gig IPod classic, about two years old. It was almost full to the brim. Everytime I played it, it would play two tracks then crash. If I switched between playlists it would crash. My first thought was to remove everything from it and do a factory reset. But given that it had over 20000 tracks I wasn't too keen to do that.
So I gave Apple a call. And do you know what they told me? Oh sir, that model can't handle being full. If you put too much into it's storage the operating system can't handle it's processes properly. Get it down to just under 100 gigs and it should operate perfectly.
And do you know what? It does; it never crashes now.
What is the bloody point of 120 (actually less because of the space taken up by the IPod software, but what the hey)gigs of storage space if you can't use it???? I am only talking a cut of about 2000 tracks, but still....
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I've an 80Gb
Nearly full...anyone think the same will apply?
I thought mine had a few
I thought mine had a few weeks back but after reseting it it seems fine. Oddly, if anything, the sounds seems clearer.
By pure coincidence...
... my nearly-full 80GB fella had been being really slow/jerky on the menus for a week or two, then "hung up" completely at the weekend. A quick reset, and lo, good as new! I'll take note from this thread and and keep a few gig free though...
Yes
Once you start going above using 70GB you will start to see problems. It may be 71 or 72 but the higher it goes the more problems you will have.
An 80GB AnyOtherManufacturers mp3 player would be just as limited. See my comment below.
I've got an 80gigger
I've always kept a minimum of 1GB free space on it, and never had any problems. It's over 4 years old now.
Apple
it just works...up to a point.
Every ipod/zune/android/dvd recorder/computer of any make
If it says it has storage of X only 0.9X is available to use by you.
If you wanted to store 120GB you should have bought a 140GB model of some kind. It's a dirty little secret of the electronics industry.
I'm not aware of ANY manufacturer who quotes the 'available to use by you' capacity in their product description. A 32GB Android phone will have only 25GB available to use.
ps I'm not even going to bother to go into the Gibibye/Gigabyte debacle.
Not quite every computerised gadget.
Many devices (e.g. cameras) have their operating functionality stored separately from the data. It's when the basic functionality shares the same storage space as the data that this becomes an issue.
With cameras
A camera might say it has a small amount of storage that is left over from internal use but it is expected that you buy, say, a 2GB card. But, of course, this 2GB suffers from the gibibyte/gigabye problem/definition I mention which means only 1.8GB is available for storage.
I've just looked at the Canon and Fuji range of cameras and neither even mention memory capacity. They must expect everybody to use cards. I do recollect that some older cameras used to have something like 32MB of storage but that would store 2 pictures today.
Realistically, everyone does use cards.
No one expects the native storage capacity to provide much more than enough space to make sure that the thing actually works!
Had the same problem on my iphone
When I was syncing music I clicked on the option to fill the remaining space with music, and I had loads of problems. You would think that Apple would have set that feature up so that it only imported enough songs so that you didn't get any grief, but no. The very helpful guy in the Apple shop did roll his eyes a little when I suggested it, though
Presumably it's a function of the physical hard disk?
All the iPods chez Stimpy are smaller solid state models and they don't seem to have a problem with being filled to the very brim.
My old Nano
was always filled to the brim and never crashed, worked perfectly.
My 160GB Classic
is often filled to capacity without problems. When I say "filled to capacity", mind, I'm talking 143GB (The iPod itself says 145.1GB is available but I leave it a little headroom just in case).
When I first bought it and used iTunes to fill it up it was often unstable and would all-too-often crash during loading or shortly after finishing loading, necessitating resetting and starting from scratch.
These days I don't use iTunes at all, I load it from automatically-generated playlists from Media Monkey. The sheer capacity of the iPod and the size of my library makes choosing every single track/album I put on it just too time-consuming otherwise. I set up an auto playlist with a size limit of what the iPod can actually hold and various constraints of genre etc. and let the software and the iPod do their thing. It takes a long time to load up but it works fine every time now and stability is no longer an issue.
The reason
Its to do with insufficient "scratch" space. The Ipod Operating System needs overspill space to operate properly. This is the space it uses when the relatively low inbuilt RAM runs out. If you don't leave it enough, it may fall over and be unstable if the disk is full. Same thing actually, to some extent with any desktop PC or mac.
The reason Apple were reluctant to build in sufficient scratch, is because it would mean that the accessible, and advertisable available disk space would be slightly lower. Odd decision, very Un-Apple.
Mine is a 120 classic
of similar vintage. It's full [*] but I notice that it slows down rather than crashes i.e. it clearly likes to have a bit of headroom.
So to an extent I think they are fobbing you off. [edit: however mine probably has longer than tracks than a typical one and so the lookup tables etc are probably not quite as full. Maybe this helps it. I certainly find I have to leave a bit of headroom, but a gig or so seems fine.]
My 8Gb Nano seemed OK, I can't now remember what my U2 model (I think it was 40Gb or 20), was like--packed in a while ago.
iPods, can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em, etc etc ...
[* how could a Wordista's not be ...]
I had my 160G classic
filled to the very brim of the brim until recently and never had a problem.
Talking of hard drive space
I got a 2TB external hard drive the other day and of course it's only really 1.8TB. This is indeed the dirty little secret of the industry. Shouldn't it by a 2.2 odd TB hard drive and therefore 2TB out of the box?