Updating Firmware: 6.5th Gen Only

When I first bought my Silver iPod Classic, I didn't do enough research and ended up buying an iPod listed as "7th" gen with 120 Gb storage. Anyone who has looked into modding 7th gen iPods knows that there are two versions of the 7th gen: Silver and grey 160 Gb with thin backplates. 

OH NO! My 6/6.5th gen iPod is storage capacity locked! Is there a solution? 

There was never a 7th gen with 120 Gb storage. I had unwittingly purchased a "6.5th" gen iPod. At first I thought I was screwed because I knew that the 6th gen iPods were locked to 128 Gb of storage capacity due to 28-bit LBA limitations. However, after doing more research I found a reddit post where a github user had figured out how to update the firmware of the 6th gen to get rid of this storage limitation. In my case, going from firmware 2.0.1 to 2.0.4 would allow me to obtain full control over my iPod classic storage. 

After completing the firmware update and completing the mods, I can confirm that the storage capacity lock is no longer present. My iPod Classic now reads 1 TB of storage. 

I followed the video and guide below and was able to install the firmware without any problems.  The guide recommends 2.0.2, but I have had no issues with 2.0.4. 

2.0.4 vs. 2.0.5:

If you already have 2.0.4, do you need to update to 2.0.5? 

The 2.0.5 firmware was introduced in the EU market so that users could turn off the EU volume limit. Other than that, the firmwares are virtually the same. Notably, the 2 firmware versions were also for differing hardware configurations. 

iPod Classic 7th Gen Teardown: 

*Note: There are many teardown guides on YouTube. This is a quick overview of the teardown. READ the Opening the iPod Classic step before attempting to open the 7th gen. Always do your research before modding any device. 

The iPod Classic is notoriously considered one of the most difficult iPods to open, however, there are a few tricks to make opening the iPod easier. After the iPod is open, the rest of the teardown is extremely easy. Extra care needs to be given to removing the FCCs, but there isn't much difficulty after this. 

1. Opening the iPod Classic: 

   1. Traditionally, you should jam the thin pry tool between the faceplate and backplate and pry the internals out by pushing down and leveraging the body up for the 5th gen iPods. However, this works because the clips are located on the internals/faceplate portion of the iPod 5th gen. For 7th gen iPod classics, the clips are actually on the backplate. This means that you should push the pry tool between the faceplate and backplate and push towards the faceplate instead. I have linked a video that shows what perfectly showing this technique.

2. Disconnect the battery:

   1. Upon opening the iPod, there is a small FCC cable connected straight to the battery when you place the iPod facedown. Make sure to pop the black locking tab to remove the FCC cable before fully opening the iPod. 

3. Disconnect the HDD:

   1. Unfold the HDD downwards out of the backplate and unlock the black locking tab for the HDD. You can then remove the HDD from the faceplate. 

4. Disconnect the Headphone Jack & Lock/Unlock Slider by popping the black tab located on the middle left of the motherboard. 

5. Disconnect the LCD screen: 

   1. Pop up the black unlock tab located in the center top of the mother board.

6. Remove the 6 screws on the outside of the faceplate

7. Remove the LCD screen carefully. The shiny metallic LCD shield should be removed with the LCD.

8. Unfold the Scroll wheel and remove the 2 screws holding the motherboard to the internal aluminum frame. 

9. Push the motherboard out of the aluminum frame. This will require a fair amount of pressure. the Motherboard is taped into place from factory. 

10. Disconnect the Scroll Wheel: 

    1. Pop up the black unlock tab stemming from where the Scroll Wheel FCC terminates. 

iFlash Mod: 

The iFlash Mod uses the same FCC connector cable to connect Micro SD cards, SD Cards, M.2 NVME SSDs, Compact Flash Drives, as new storage types for the iPod Classic, getting rid of the HDD; the most popular being the SD card iFlash models. Why do an iFlash Mod? 

1. Micro SD cards are more reliable and less likely to break than HDDs. HDDs are slower and more prone to breaking if dropped do to having physical spinning drives. 

2. Storage Capacity can be immensely improved over the stock amount. All stock iPod 7th gens are capped to 160 GB. With the iFlash, the limit is your wallet. That being said, the limitation becomes loading and shuffling music after around 1 TB of storage. This is because the motherboard of the iPod Classic only has 64 MB of ram. The furthest you can realistically go is 2 TB, with 1 TB being seen as the usable amount before the iPod OS starts becoming unstable. 

3. The iFlash is very thin, allowing you to add a bigger battery than stock. In my case, I went for the iFlash Quad, which allows me to use a 3800 mAh battery, much larger than the stock 550 mAh battery. 

Bigger Battery Mod: 

Adding a big battery is one of the easiest mods to do on the iPod Classic 7th gen. All you have to do is remove the bottom right corner ribbon cable (Front of the iPod facing down) and install a higher rated mAh battery. There are a lot of aftermarket batteries that are much higher capacity than the stock 550 mAh iPod Classic 7th gen battery. I opted for a 3800 mAh battery with my iFlash Quad storage mod.

Optional: 

There's still some modding potential that I could potentially go forward with later on down the line.

• Bluetooth

• USB-C

Restoring iPod after modding: 

It took me some time, but I figured it out. It took me a little bit of messing around, but I found a few keys things that are required steps to get the restoration working. 

1. I used Samsung Pro Plus Micro SD cards. I followed the iFlash SD card recommendation. You can find this on their website. 

2. You need to format the Micro SD cards before you install them on your iPod. When I first obtained the cards, I used Disk Management to look at the partition. I noticed that, from factory, there was 32 Mb of storage being used and the SD cards for formatted in exFAT.

   1. After failing to recover the iPod, I decided to reformat the partition: cmd -> diskpart (no space) -> list disk -> select disk _ -> clean -> create partition primary. Checking in Disk Management, I could now see that the 32 Mb of storage being used was cleared and the entire storage pool was one partition.

   2. Go into File Explorer and select the SD card -> reformat -> exFAT (exFAT works fine with iTunes).

   3. When plugging in the battery to the iPod, you should get a "Use Itunes to Restore" message. This means the SD card formatting was done correctly.

3. Plug your iPod Classic into your computer and make sure iTunes is open. Once the iPod connects, you should see a prompt telling you to restore your iPod. Select "Ok". 

   1. The iPod will display a "Do not disconnect" message and then move to loading bar with the apple logo. 

   2. If your iPod gets stuck on the "Do not disconnect" page, wait for a few minutes and then force restart the iPod. To do this, hold the Menu and select button at the same time for 8 seconds until you see the Apple logo. When you see the Apple logo, you can stop pressing. 

4. In iTunes, your iPod should be ready to set up. If not, close iTunes (use task manager if iTunes is unresponsive) and reopen iTunes. Force restart the iPod if it is not showing up in iTunes. 

Key things: 

1. Format Micro SD card to FAT32 or exFAT. Clean the disk and create partition primary in diskpart. 

2. Hold the Menu and Select button to force restart the iPod to get prompts from iTunes. 

3. If "Connected" is not displayed, your iPod has not been detected by your PC. 

Important/Useful things to know about iTunes:

1. You can have different libraries on one PC by Shift + left clicking iTunes and adding/selecting a library folder.

2. The iPod Classic 7th gen supports movies/video up to 240p (320 x 240), but you can put 480p (640 x 480) so that you get better video quality when outputting to a TV/monitor.

3. Menu + Select (hold for 8 seconds) button force restarts the iPod in case it gets stuck. 

4. Menu + Select (hold for 8 seconds) -> when you see the apple logo - Select + Previous (Hold until you see the