My iPod is not recognized by iTunes or the desktop?

lindsym, if all you get is the rhythmic clicking, it does sound like the hard drive. You should get a message to contact Apple etc. on the display, but I would go ahead and replace the drive anyway :-) Just a quick warning, the HDD are not inexpensive. Check on here and I am sure you can find more places like it. Follow this guide for the repair. Also, you might want to consider replacing the HDD with a CF card. Check this answer for more information. Hope this helps, good luck.

I definately agree. I use a stethescope to listen to the ipod and

compare the sound against a known good ipod. Like oldturkey

says....rhythmic clicking is a bad drive because there is only

1 moving part in any ipod....the drive platters and read/write heads.

Normally, you can hear the platters spin...sounds like a whine.

You can tell it's a spinning thing from the sound it makes.

So if the sound is different - toast it is.