A community has appeared in recent years that restores old iPods and modifies them to work using flash storage rather than the original hard drives. Combined with new batteries, they address the two most likely points of failure to ensure the devices continue to function for years to come. Since everyone is stuck at home right now, I decided it was a good time to buy a used iPod and rebuild it to better specs.
I bought an iPod 7th Gen with a bad headphone jack, along with some replacement parts:
A new enclosure to restore without someone else’s dents and scratches, and because the 7th gen is notoriously difficult to open without damaging the exterior
A black click wheel to shift the appearance to aluminum and black, a configuration not available officially
A hold switch, dock connector, and replacement headphone jack that are all black and replace the white ones
A flashmod board and SD cards to expand the storage to 512 GB
A replacement battery because I didn’t know the age of the old one
Once I got the device open, the process was generally straightforward and now I have a digital music player to use for years to come that will fit my entire iTunes library with room to spare.
