The picture of tweezers is great as a pointing tool but I prefer to use a finger nail whenever possible. With a finger nail you can get the perfect amount of leverage on a latch and it’s spread over a greater length of the lever. I’ve broken a few plastic latches early on with with tweezers and prefer to avoid them now.

Getting the ribbons back in can be a challenge but don’t give up. Pull them taught and try to work at an angle that give you the most length.

2nd the removing of the joystick first via the two screws and to be careful handling the plastic washer underneath. It’s coated with a Teflon type material to aid in stick movement. also use a finger nail over tweezers any change you get. A nail is less rigid with natural give and less likely to break plastic latches. If it doesn’t open from the end you expect, stop, and try the other side right away. Be gently.

Upgraded two iPod Minis Gen 2 using iFlash.xyz’s CF to SD adapter. Both are now 256GB (original HDDs were 4GB). I also replaced the battery with iFixit’s generic found on Amazon.com. It looks identical to the blue ones found on ebay. It came in an anti-static bag with battery calibration instructions branded with iFixit’s logo.

Windows:

I first formatted the SD Card as Fat32 with 16KB cluster size. Then restored in iTunes. Followed with installing Rockbox 3.14 and a custom theme that looks real similar to the original UI.

Battery drain test shows 7-hrs and 48-min. I looped a FLAC file on repeat with headphones attached at moderate volume settings. I’m guessing I’d get close but less than that with the Mini on shuffle.

The original/used battery only lasted 2-hrs and 40-min with the FLAC on repeat. If you do this upgrade I’d buy a new battery too.