Everyone has or eventually will experience the dreaded click.... click... click... noise of their ipod's hard drive when its eventual death has come to be. I recently discovered by 1. Simply opening your ipod 2. Disconnecting your drive ,  3. Turning the ipod back on and letting it boot until it gives you an error 4. Turning off the ipod 5. reconnecting the drive and 6. Turning the ipod back on will fix it....

I have no idea why this works but i have had 100% success with 3 ipods; 4g; 3G; and ipod mini

Try it.. let me know how you fare
and by the way this voids your warranty

Sam