My 11 year old iPod just died (finally!) and I need something to replace it. What are these Sansas y'all talk about?

@mfladd A sad truth, to be sure. I miss my Sansa so much!!

@mfladd I was oblivious that Sansas had (for the most part) fallen to the wayside until my Fuze died a couple of years ago. I replaced it with a Sansa Clip and its passable (but still just about the best choice out there IMHO).

To the casual observer, it still seems like there is a rabid customer base for Sansas, so I can’t really understand why Sandisk declines to take the opportunity to fulfill that market.

@DrWorm I was devastated when I found I had left mine outside and it had gotten rained on (and ruined) a couple of years back… the fuze was definitely a superb piece of work.

@chienfou That’s exactly what I want it for too! Yard work and garage work! Any halfway decent replacement product?

@luvche21 just checked mine, it’s a black 8Gb clip sport. Holds a charge forever and has a micro SD slot which I don’t even currently have occupied. Still holds more music than I need and if/when I get bored, I can move new songs to it by drag-n-drop. Not sure about the iTunes question though since I don’t do the Apple thing…
FWIW the blue one is $5 cheaper at Target, I plus get free shipping and 5% off with RedCard.

@chienfou is this the one? https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sandisk-clip-jam-8gb-mp3-player-black/5228207.p?skuId=5228207 The SanDisk Clip Jam? There’s the Clip+ on Amazon for $110…

What capabilities/features would I need beyond what it comes with? I don’t imagine being too picky, but maybe there’s something awesome that I’m not seeing here?

@chienfou I absolutely must flash the firmware in my Sansas. All four of them. Immediately. Thanks entirely too much. Even though I have many, many BT gadgets, nothing compares to Sansas.

@chienfou rockbox is great. I could (and once did, on a long, five hour flight) play brickmania for hours.
/image brickmania rockbox

@medz
Mine was white, but I was always jealous of @jasontoon 's brown one.

@medz i worked part time at a toys r us… we had two ladies get in a fist fight over the last zune.

@medz My husband still uses his Zune every day!

@RiotDemon I fired someone because she tried to hold eight zunes for herself… (we got in nine…)

@joedel263 …good call! It’s one thing to have perks to work some place, but entirely unacceptable to screw all your customers like that. It seems that most people don’t understand cause and effect well:
no customers means no job…

@callow I have an 8GB blue Zune. Still works, but I don’t use it.

@medz I still have my Brown Zune 30, but use my Zune 120 most days. I’m pretty unhappy that Win10 Creator edition stopped so many of the podcasts from working. Nearly all the video podcasts won’t synch now, and some audio ones also. Now doing podcasts on Android, which isn’t as good.

@Kidsandliz Just shot you an email

@luvche21 I have not had a chance to get to this yet. Maybe tomorrow evening. Sorry.

@Kidsandliz No problem at all, I’ve been sick all weekend (same with the wife and kiddos), so there’s not much of anything going on here anyway!

@heartny we just shred a few of those at work. We used them for our hold music…

@sammydog01 a Sansa or an iPod?

@luvche21 It’s a Sansa. I love my ipod nano because it hooks into my car glove compartment and I can control it from my steering wheel. I don’t think the Sansa does.

@Pamtha Just dump the files like an external hdd. It can play a variety of formats, I’m not sure about DRM protected MP4s.

@DennisG2014 did you have any issues with getting the firmware to recognize the new drive, or did you have to ‘rockbox’ it or otherwise re-install firmware?

@chienfou Not at all. It “just worked”.
Initially, I did have problems getting it to work, which I thought was a software/firmware problem.
Spent a lot of time trying to track down the issue and followed some leads and solutions with no results and a lot of frustration when I finally discovered that the CF card I used (which was the cheapest one I could find) had a lot of negative reviews and reports of failure.
I returned that card and bought a (only slightly) more expensive, brand name card and then was relieved and delighted when it worked perfectly on the first try.

So, the answer is no, I didn’t have problems with firmware, but I did have a problem with an ill-advised, cheapo CF card.

I bought the cheapest card because I had the attitude that there was a good chance it (the iPod, not the card) wouldn’t work and so wanted to waste the least amount of money. Turns out that was the reason it didn’t work - lesson learned.

There are only 2 parts needed, the CF card and the adapter to plug it into the HD connector.
You may need to buy a tool to open the case (the hardest part of the job, actually), but I used guitar picks that I had on hand and they worked great (but were ruined in the process - no big deal, I have tons more).

@sligett I think you’re smart!
Crazy is treating expensive gadgets as “disposable”, especially ones that can so readily and easily be repaired.

@sligett it’s the iPod Classic 80 GB (purchased for Christmas 2007). It ran like a champ for most of that time since then too!

The battery is definitely dying out (doesn’t hold a charge near as well as it used to, but I still would get hours out of it until recently).

The click wheel started having a hard time recognizing when I change the volume, or scroll through lists. But that works 80% of the time still. I also have a sticker on the front and back, and i wonder if that’s getting in the way? It worked with the decal for years and years though with no issues.

The latest problem that after a little bit of playing it comes up with a message saying I need to connect to iTunes and do something. I’ll have to look at the error message again to see.

@DennisG2014 I forgot about ifixit.com - how hard was the process overall? I can’t imagine opening these things is easy. Maybe all I need is a battery replacement, I don’t know yet. I’ll definitely consider giving that a shot! The hard drive replacement itself is pretty expensive though, so I’m not sure if I will or not.

@luvche21 The difficult parts were the initial leg-work to search out solutions for my particular model, and the frustration when it wasn’t working - which, after a lot of time, effort and hair-pulling turned out to be simply a bad CF card.
Spent a lot of time barking up the wrong tree, assuming it was a software/firmware problem - that was very unpleasant - had moments where I felt like smashing things.
Glad I didn’t, though, since once I replaced the cheapo card with a good one, it worked like a charm.
So, if you don’t count the unpleasantness due to making the mistake of saving a few bucks on the CF card, it was actually very quick and easy.
Like I said, opening the case was really the hardest part (again, aside from the cheap CF debacle), but all it took was some patience and persistence.

My model is a whole different generation/design than yours, so your mileage may vary.

Yes, the replacement hard disc drives are expensive, which is only one reason why I went with the CF card - it’s essentially a solid-state drive, no moving parts, easily replaced and upgraded if I ever want more storage - just a much better solution than a HDD regardless of cost.

It was obvious with mine that the HDD was the issue, because of the noises it was making.
Mine could benefit from a new battery, but it lives semi-permanently in my car and gets its power there, so not necessary to have a good battery.
The only draw-back is that it doesn’t “sleep” when I turn the car off, it shuts down completely, so it doesn’t remember where it left off and takes a bit of time to reboot each time.
No real bother - if it did bother me I’d spring for a new battery - which would eventually die too, so screw that.

I don’t believe I actually bought anything from ifixit in the end, but I did find their guides and other resources helpful.

It’s been a couple of years, so I can’t remember where I bought the CF adapter.
I do remember it cost me a mere $5 + reasonable shipping.
The biggest cost was the CF card and that was at my discretion - learned the hard way not to skimp.

If it’s just your battery, then ifixit should have you covered.
If you need/want to try replacing the hard drive with a CF card, just use some Google-Foo - probably something like “iPod classic hard drive CF replacement”.
I had found a YT video of someone demonstrating it with my same model (he may have also been the one selling the adapters), but I remember seeing examples with newer models like yours, too.

Lastly I should mention that, while I am a tinkerer, I have no particular skills or knowledge when it comes to electronics/tech, and none was necessary in this case.

Good luck!

Just tried Googling my suggestion and, yup, all the info is out there, I’ll leave it to you to sort through it, if you decide to go that route.

@DennisG2014

I have one of these classics. I used to love them so much.

If they had Bluetooth (for earphones) and could be loaded via wifi, i would totally repair/upgrade.

Mine is still working, when powered up. I have a bunch of fav audiobooks on it.

@f00l I have an iPod integration kit in my car; the iPod plugs in via a dock connector in the center arm-rest console and is controlled through the buttons on the car stereo.
That is its home. It only comes out when I have new music I want to update it with (and it holds every bit of music I own).
It sits in the center console through the heat of the summer and the freezing cold of the winter.
When it died, I had no idea what I’d do to replace it.
A brand new, or even used, iPod would’ve been a tremendous waste of money in that circumstance.
I thought of buying the cheapest generic MP3 player I could find, but then the money I spent on, and the convenience of, the iPod integration kit would go to waste.
Resurrecting my trusty old pal was the ideal solution and I was thrilled that it was so cheap and easy to do.
Some day I’ll buy a new car and, by then, I expect it’ll be difficult if not impossible to integrate my old relic into the system, which will likely have it’s own built in digital storage/player, anyway.
It’ll be a sad day - I don’t think I could bring myself to give it a proper Viking funeral, it’ll probably spend the rest of eternity in a drawer full of other junk I couldn’t part with.

@DennisG2014

I would purchase a new one if they has wifi, bt, and the volume and play controls operated by other than touchscreen.

I loved the old ones so much in part because you could play/pause/Rew/ffd without looking at them.

Ands I just don’t want to deal with iTunes on a machine and a cable hookup of I can help it.

It got to be easier to just load the music onto an old unactivated phone. That would pretty much hook into everything.

@wew Oh, I can’t believe I never thought of that. You can buy a (new) prepaid phone for $20, and throw a microsd card into it. I like it.

@sligett I actually did just that to use as an alarm and weather station on the nightstand. No worries about phone calls/texts etc or forgetting to turn off the volume when I go to sleep. (I know you can stop those notifications with ‘quiet time’ settings, but my work schedule is all over the map: evenings, nights, days, 8hours, 12, 16 … it varies widely, and I don’t want to have to reset it each time I want/need to sleep)
I also use it to stream Pandora (wi-fi) to the BT speakers around the pool in the summer. I even bought a stand at the Dollartree that keeps it plugged in so it is always charged.

@sligett took me awhile to think about this. Yeah, a few years ago I asked A Lot of forums what to replace my sansa with, and they vastly laughed at me and said ‘just get a phone dude’. (Years before this, when I had busted my second ipod, I asked the same questions, not wanting to spend several hundred dollars on another ipod–then, they suggested Sansa with rockbox.)
I’ve gotten a bit too decrepit to mess with buying a ten dollar used phone and trying to put music on it:(isn’t copy protection hard to get around?).
You seem to have an interest in the Sansas’ modified with Rockbox. I say, go for it. Keep an eye on ebay, affordable once come up. Try a sansa clip plus.