I believe that my way of doing this is nothing unique. If you do a search on the web you will find info that indicates that others have reached the same conclusions.
Please send me feedback on the instructions, there is room for improvements.
November 2004
I use my iPod every day for 2-3 hours on my way to and from work. About 3/4 years ago I was very frustrated because I believed I had to pay for a battery replacement on my second generation iPod. As it turned out I am still using the same iPod, last week my battery life was down to 1 1/2 hour again. When I came home I started to recharge the battery and it finished after only 3/4 hour. Normally it should use 3 or 4 hours That jogged my memory of what I did the last time.
Now my iPod is up to more than 8* hours playing time again.
Here is the HOWTO:
Each file is stored in many different locations on the hard disk, broken up in small pieces.
Some of you might like to skip to 10. (bottom of this page) for some tecnical explanation for all this.This HOWTO assumes your iPod space is less than your iTunes music collection. If this is not true you only need to make the "Empty" playlist, use the iPod Updater and the optional Disk Utility.
Caution: Read all warnings you get, if something goes wrong, you are on your own. There are no guaranties attached to this HOWTO. Something in your setup, hardware or in your iPod hardware might render your iPod useless. But if you are close to 1 hour playing time it is nearly useless anyway so you might as well try?
Preparation:
1. You should charge your iPod first.
Use Software Update in System preferences to download the latest iPod Updater (Or use link in sidebar).
2. Make one or more playlist that contains music that will fill your iPod 85 - 90%. Make one playlist with no music that you name "Empty".
Action:
3. Connect your iPod
4. Quit iTunes
5. Launch the iPod Updater from your Utilities folder.
iPod Updater summary window.
Read the warning in the iPod Updater summary window and choose Restore. Read the warnings again and choose Restore once more (Or cancel if you are about to lose unique data. Are you using your iPod to store other data than music from iTunes?).
Then you will have to enter your password. The updater starts. Be patient on every step!
Follow the instructions.
When you are asked to unplug: do it and wait for the symbol on the iPod to tell you to replug.
Wait some more for the summary window to reappear.
Then quit.
6. Start iTunes. iTunes kicks up iPod setup assistant.
iTunes asks you to give your iPod a name.
Deselect "Automatically update..........."
Choose Next and Done.
7. In iTunes: Select the iPod and go into the iPod options.
Choose "Automatically update selected playlists only:"
Read the warning and choose O.K.
Select the playlists you made and O.K. Fill up to max 85 - 90%. (There is no lower limit.)
The next time you want to remove and add some other music you first choose to sync with playlist "Empty" and then you choose your new playlist, while keeping minimum 10 - 15 % free space.
( This recommendation might be very conservative. You are free to try other limits. 5 % might be sufficient. )
This writes the music files in a contiguous way on the hard disk.
If you erase and add files in a normal manner you will get fragmentation. The iPod hard disk will have to work more to read your music and your battery will suffer.
8. (Optional) Quit iTunes. Start up your favorite "Disk Utility" and do a repair or as in my favorite disk utility DiskWarrior choose Rebuild.
9.Now you have to recharge the battery.
That's it. If you are as lucky as me you can enjoy your iPod again for many hours.
10. So why do we do this?
Here is the scenario: One day you realize that your iPod has got a playing time thats only one or two hours. You believe that not so far ago this was no problem. You try to recharge the battery and it only charges for maybe one hour.
1. I believe there is something wrong in the OS, that makes charging of the battery go wrong. Thats why I use the updater to reset the OS.
Using the updater to reset is also the first step in defragmentation.
2. The defragmentation I believe is useful to do every time you decide to remove some music and replace that with some other music. Then you get minimal movement of disk heads
3. The third thing is not to stress your filesystem and OS by filling it up 100%, which I believe might be the reason for the corruption of the OS in the first place.
4. We use the Disk Utility to check that the filesystem is O.K.
* This morning I started my iPod playing at my normal listening level it just passed 8 hours and I choose to stop it to take some screenshots to use in this HOWTO.
I am a computer consultant specializing in cross platform issues and graphics and designer support in Norway.
You can get my professional help via mail
More info in norwegian.
