My 3G iPod got stuck with the Apple logo on its screen. The way to fix this is to put the iPod into Disk Mode and restore it from there. Here is how:

1. Reset the iPod by holding down the Menu and Play buttons simultaneously.
2. As soon as it reboots, hold down the Fast Forward and Rewind buttons simultaneously.
3. Your iPod will now be in “Disk Mode” and you should be able to plug it into your computer, open up iTunes, and restore your iPod.

I have an old 3G iPod, and all of a sudden it would not show up in iTunes when connected to my computer via Firewire or USB. It did show up in Finder. After some research, the only way I found to fix this is to format it using Apple’s Disk Utility. WARNING: Doing this will wipe everything off your iPod. You won’t be able to recover the files off your iPod, but at least you’ll be able to use it with iTunes again.

1. Connect your iPod you to your Mac.
2. Open up Disk Utility (Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility).
3. Select your iPod in the left-hand window pane.
4. Click the “Erase” tab, accept all defaults, then click the “Erase” button.

Your iPod will now be re-formatted, and you should be able to plug it into iTunes and Restore the updated iPod software.

UPDATE: For PCs, you may be able to do something similar with Windows’ Disk Manager. I haven’t tried though, so I can’t verify, but I bet it would work on Windows too.

A couple years ago I posted about a fix for Delayed Write Failed errors when updating an iPod on Windows XP. While my suggestions in that post worked for the most part, I still encountered the error from time to time.

So it’s been a couple years and now I NEVER receive this error. Here’s how I did it:

I used to connect my iPod to my PC via USB. However, I had purchased an external Firewire hard drive which required me to install a Firewire card into a PCI slot on my machine. The card had 4 Firewire inputs, and I needed to free up a USB port for some other peripherals that needed them. So I decided to move my iPod connection from USB to my new Firewire card (Koutech KW-582V2 – cost me $21 bucks from NewEgg).

Ever since then I have NEVER received the Delayed Write error. So if you’re having trouble updating your iPod and get the “Delayed Write Failed” error, perhaps it is your USB connection. Try moving your iPod to another USB port, and if you’re using a USB hub, try bypassing the hub and plug your iPod directly into your computer’s USB port. If THAT doesn’t work, try a Firewire port. If you don’t have one, grab yourself a Firewire card. You can get them cheap and are much more valuable than all the hair you’re pulling out trying to fix your Delayed Write Failed.

Note: Be sure to read my Update to this post

When trying to update my shiny new iPod via iTunes on Windows XP, I kept getting the following error:
Delayed Write Failed
Windows was unable to save all the data for the file x. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.

The iPod would lockup and I’d have to reset it to get it to work again. After some research I found the cause: Write Caching was disabled on my hard disks. Because iTunes tries to push as much data as possible as quickly as possible, Windows was unable to keep up, resulting in the error.

To enable Write Caching on your hard disks:

Start > Control Panel > System > Device Manager > Disk Drives > Properties > Policies > Enable Disk Caching

Note that this option was unavailable to me (grayed out), and after some research I realized it was because I had the Intel Application Accelerator installed, which turns OFF write caching and prevents you from enabling it. So after a quick uninstall of Intel Application Accelerator and a quick reboot, I was able to enable Write Caching on my hard disks, and now the error is gone and my iPod is updating as expected.