Chosen Solution
I have run manual diagnostics and it shows that the hard drive is present, however when I try and run disk utility to format the drive it does not show it there. It only shows the flash memory (18 mb). The iPod still shows the red X with a new drive and will not go into disk mode. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
I bought a cheap zif/usb connector to plug the ipod hard drive directly into my pc. If the hard drive is good, Windows will detect the drive. It’s the easiest way to check if the hard drive is working. If it doesn’t detect or gives errors, the hard drive is probably bad.
