I've been having some.....a lot of trouble in formatting my 3rd generation 40Gb iPod. It seems that there are some bad sectors that are ruining everything. When I perform a usual format and reinstall all the music files, a part of the songs won't play, and after a while, I lose all the songs (although they are still on the ipod's hard drive), it seems the songlist isn't recognized. I've tried a variety of programs that claim to format and organize bad sectors but to no avail. Does anyone know of a program specificly designed to deep format an Ipod while exculding bad sectors?

Thank you!

ipod 40gb has an built in internal harddisc.. like any other normal hard disc available on the market for PC and notebooks, once they have write errors in thier system or known as bad sectors, they r usually hard to repair... ur only option is to bring it to an ipod centre with a warranty and haf them replace ur hard disc.. cheers, hope this helps..

That's what I was told tatwei by the iPod support, however, I was hoping to avoid paying half the price of a new one. Thanks.