I bought a used 10GB, first generation iPod on eBay sold "as-is" with the folder/exclamation mark problem. I figured it'd be either an easy fix (restore) or somewhat more difficult (replacing the hard drive).

After painstakingly getting it to mount (disk mode was very finicky), I was able to restore, with a few halts while doing so. Most of the time it would freeze on the Apple logo. After further inspection in a quieter area, I found that it had the click of death. :mad:

Today I replaced the hard drive with a 20GB, Toshiba MK2004GAL which is supposed to work (though the one I bought was OEM w/o the Apple logo which some random Japanese website said wouldn't work). At one point I was able to restore and then remount the iPod in iTunes. It would see the entire drive (18-ish formatted GB) and I was able to transfer songs to it. But when I unmounted and restarted the iPod, it would freeze on the language selection screen.

Now, I was able to restore it again, but now it gives me the folder/exclamation mark error and then powers off. I wish I could manually format the drive, but I don't have that ZIF to IDE adapter. Now I am unable to get it into disk mode alltogether. I'm thinking that the logic board or the drive controller is screwed up, but I was hoping someone would have a better suggestion than scrapping it. The sad thing is that it's in very good condition with few scratches on the back and none on the front...

When I was able to get it to mount, the "do not disconnect" screen would occasionally have lines banding across it, but on a few other counts, it didn't have any at all. I'm not sure what component is at fault.

EDIT: I bought a ZIF to IDE adapter, I guess I'll see how that goes in a couple days. My friend who's a genius for an Apple store says my iPod is hosed. It seems to me that it's something to do with the hard drive...