iPod Touch Troubles

My 1st generation iPod Touch would not sync today. As soon as I plugged the USB cable into the computer, iTunes would register the new iPod’s presence, but immediately error out with:

The iPod Minerva cannot be synced. The required disk cannot be found.

After googling a bit, it seemed most people solved this by removing or plugging in a different device’s USB cable right after hitting the Sync button. Unfortunately, this didn’t work for me because iTunes chose automatically to sync as soon as I plugged my iPod in (no matter what options I set). Finally, I stumbled on one person’s advice: the cable is bad.

Or at least unable to sufficiently communicate with iTunes.

So I switched cables and everything’s working fine now.