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I have an iPod Classic that needs a new battery; the old battery will no longer hold a charge. I've been told that if I send it to Apple to be fixed they will restore the device and the music will be lost.

My question is this:

If I replace the battery myself, will the music/data stay on the hard drive?

I shouldn't have to restore it if all I do is replace the battery, right?

I would copy all the music, but there's some older music that I want to keep that iTunes won't let me sync (something about permissions, etc).

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The iPod classic has no NVRAM/PRAM or settings that degrade when battery power is disconnected. Unless you want to roll the risk that opening the device causes irreparable harm into the definition of "replacing the battery" - you are safe to go. Just like you can pull a hard drive and place it in a new computer - same with the drives in a classic iPod - everything important is on the drive.

I would put this in the class of putting a spare tire on a car. Even if you've never done it before, you get out the manual and most people can do this themselves - especially if you are not in a rush. Likewise, those that really shouldn't attempt the operation generally have a good intuition that they are not up to the task.

I say, dive in and replace your battery once you've read up on which connectors are fragile for your specific model. Cracking the case is by far the hardest part of the surgery.

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Replacing the battery in your iPod Classic should not wipe any of your music or data. All of the music and data stored on any iOS device is stored on either flash memory or in the case of the classic, an HDD. That being said, anytime you undertake a repair like this you always run the risk of encountering some sort of error that will require you to restore the device or worse yet damaging the device and making it unusable.

I know it's not the question you asked, but I would also suggest using a 3rd party app such as iExplorer to go ahead and back up all of the music on your device. You should also be able to re-import that music back into iTunes and be good to continue syncing through iTunes like you always have just with all of your music safe and sound now.

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It may be hard to give you a concrete yes/no answer, because things always can go wrong, and even if you get the battery replaced, you may break something in the process of getting it put back together. (The replacement procedure is quite an involved ordeal, as you are likely aware).

That said, I found this forum which caused me to dig into it a little deeper. There is software that allows you to pull the music off of you iPod - such as CopyTrans, that may allow you to back up your iPod, if you so desire to do so. In fact, here is a whole list of software that should provide that functionality for you. Scroll up on that link, and you may find more helpful information.

Back to the point: replacing the main battery shouldn't have any negative effect on your iPod. (One interesting side note: notice Apple never warns about leaving a fully discharged device too long with the risk of losing data - there are other problems that may occur if that was to happen, of course). iPods use Flash storage which is not dependent on constant power - like some types of RAM are.

So the short of this: you shouldn't lose data, but back it up anyway.

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I know this sounds a bit like an anti-answer, but I'd suggest that getting around the iTunes permission issue with your older music would be easier than changing the battery yourself.

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