Good news on the picture front
I should probably have mentioned that my “external hard drive” is actually my old iPod Photo. While there’s more I could say about my recent iPod upgrade (he said, hinting at an upcoming article topic), it will suffice to say right now that my older iPod — one of the actual “Photo” models that came with the S-Video-enabled dock in the box (rather than relegating it to the status of optional accessory, as was the case with other/later 4th generation iPod models) — was pressed into service as my “Lightroom hard drive.”
(I don’t keep my Lightroom folder on my Powerbook’s hard drive directly, as there’s just not enough space left (without digging into the 10 GB space “buffer” I like to maintain) on it.)
And it had been working fairly well in that capacity, thank you. The FireWire connection pretty much ensured that it didn’t slow down Lightroom’s access times to any significant extent, and it was portable. And at 40 GB, it had enough space for my RAW processing needs, and then some extra as well.
But last night — actually, it was probably this morning — it developed a bit of a flutter. The specific symptom was that it didn’t respond when I connected it to my Mac; it just sat there. Resetting it resulted in a “dead battery” warning appearing on the screen; it would respond to being connected to the Mac at this point, but would only boot as far as the initial Apple logo before re-booting, again and again.
Highly concerning!
In IT, there’s a motto one can basically live by. It’s something I even ask my various relatives and friends when they come to me with a computer problem: did you Google it? In the vast majority of cases, a Google search that uses search terms into which some thought has been put will turn up the solution to most computer problems one is encountering (unless the problem is that one cannot connect to the Internet; that’s a different kettle of fish).
The third entry down on the list of search results solved the problem for me:
1) Connect the iPod with the USB cable to your computer. If the battery has ran out, you might notice an odd looking black & white “battery charging” sign.
2) Run the iPod in “Diagnostic mode” (more details about diagnostic mode in the post following this one). Diagnostic mode can be accessed by pushing the “hold” switch into the “on” (or orange) position and then “off” (into the original position). Then press the following buttons in the following order: “menu” plus “select” (centre button) then press “reverse” plus “select”. This will take you to the hidden diagnostic mode screen menu which is in black and white letters.
Note: it took me a few trials and pressing the buttons in the right way for this to work, so be patient and keep trying if you have to.
3) The diagnostic mode will give you 7 choices which are: Memory, IO, Power, Status, SysCfg, Diskmode, and Reset. Don’t bother trying “reset” because in my case it didn’t work it just took me back to the same problem. Instead, choose “diskmode”, after which you should get an odd looking “ok to disconnect” sign on the iPod screen.
4) In my case, I was using Windows XP and had recently downloaded the latest ipod updater software. So I went to “my computer” and made sure that the PC recognised the ipod as an external drive/device. I then ran the ipod updater software (that came on the CD which came with my ipod) and did a “restore”. Within seconds, the ipod’s screen was back to its normal state with the usual menu screen. After that the updater software will immediately ask you to plug your ipod into the power adapter and an electrical outlet so the firmware can be reset, make sure you do that, and let the battery charge while you are at it.
I haven’t done that last part yet, but the iPod is connected to my computer again, and I am presently evacuating the RAW files off of it. Pics of the Day for today and yesterday should be along shortly.
Phew!
