Resurrecting my iPod 5th generation with "very low battery"

khnorris wrote:

Every couple of minutes, I hear the hard drive whir, see the Apple logo light up on the screen, as if it's powering up, but then the screen darkens and I see the message "Please wait. Very low battery." I assume that the battery isn't holding enough charge to power up the device,

That sounds as thought the battery has failed. I doubt that it will ever take enough charge to make the iPod work.

Apple no longer offer a repair service for the iPod Classic, but there are places that can fit a replacement battery for you. You will have to enquire locally to where you live.

Regarding the music on the iPod; the Classic could only have music added to it by iTunes (the programme on a computer), so that music should still be in the iTunes Library that was used to manage the iPod. If you changed computers, did you move your library to the new computer? Did you ever make a backup of your music?

By the way, if you now have a Mac with OS Catalina (10:15) or later on it, then use Finder, not iTunes.

If you no loner have the library of music that you once did, then you will have to resort to the original source of it in order to re-build your library. For music that you originally:

• • purchased from the iTunes Store, sign into your store account and download those purchases from your account's past purchases page
  • purchased from other online stores, such as Amazon or Bandcamp (etc.), go to your account with that store and re-download the music
  • ripped (copied) from CDs, use the CD to rip a replacement copy
  • obtained from other online sources, such as artist websites, go back to that source

khnorris wrote:

... but it's so much easier to listen simply from the iPod.

It is, I agree.

so I'll be able to plug the iPod into that in order to remove the material I had put onto it to use as a portable hard drive.

Perhaps I've misunderstood what you wrote there, but it's not a simple process to get music off an iPod and back into either Finder (on more recent Macs) or iTunes. Files backed up onto an iPod; yes, although it's not something I ever had success with, but music; no.

In your situation, I recommend that you make sure that you have a valid and working backup of your music files. Do not rely on getting it back off the iPod either now, or in the future.