My Solution to the unreadable/unwritable disk problem.

[AlanR]

I've had the "Disk cannot be written to/read from" problem for the shuffle for a couple months now. Just now I solved it (for my case).

In this case:
1. I restored the shuffle.
2. I restarted the computer.
3. I opened iTunes, added one song. Success.
4. Tried adding another song. Failure.
5. Restored shuffle.
6. Restarted computer.
7. Opened iTunes.
8. It prompted to name iPod, so I did. After myself.
9. I went to iPod options and turned on disk usage for files, setting it to about 31MB for files and the rest for audio.
10. Added one song. Success.
11. Added another song. Success.
12. Opened up Firefox, and logged onto the iLounge forums.

I have a feeling that as soon as I try something different it will go haywire, so I'll report back.

[AlanR]

Note: I also had AIM and ICQ off. Don't know if it's a factor, but it's one thing that I did different this time than the other times (besides turning on disk usage).

[AlanR]

UPDATE: I disconnected it to listen to it to test if the sound is okay, which it was. Then when reconnecting it, iTunes wouldn't recognize it. The iPod updater would, but not iTunes.