Solid State Drive upgrade for 5gen Ipod Video?

[gomem]

Has anyone managed to put a solid state drive (SSD) into a hard disk drive Ipod, or any other HDD player such as the Irivers, and got it to work?

Was thinking about this because I've just upgraded the HDD in my Sony Vaio P with a SSD, and this uses the same Toshiba 1.8 inch form factor HDDs as the Ipods, and other Rockbox capable HDD players. The SSD just goes straight in replacing the existing IDE drive.

Doing this should greatly increase the battery life of HDD Rockbox players, and make them much more robust.

[LambdaCalculus]

A great many people around here have performed CompactFlash mods, which is a similar idea (replace the HDD with a flash-based storage device), but I don't think anyone's really gone so far as to use a real SSD, mostly due to the high costs of them (versus a CF card and an adapter).

But if you want, you can try it out and tell us about it.

[GodEater]

I would imagine the big problem is that these SSDs are nearly all SATA, which would mean you'd require *some* sort of convertor to connect them to the ipod board. And we all know how much free space there is inside an ipod right? Absolutely none whatsoever.

[LambdaCalculus]

That's true, and a search on Newegg turned up no SSDs that are 1.8" and PATA.

There were, however, plenty of 2.5" SSDs  that are PATA, so this kind of mod may make more sense on an Archos device. For other HDD targets, a CF mod makes much more sense.

[gomem]

The SSD I used to upgrade my Sony Vaio P UMPC with is a 64GB PATA device which fits in the 1.8 inch space vacated by the 1.8 inch Toshiba HDD. It was £200 GBP, so it's not a cheap device. But it increases the performance of this computer, is more robust, and extends the battery life as well.

As for trying to replace the current HDD in my 5G Ipod, it's not really an option at the moment because I use that player on a daily basis. Will have to wait till I get another HDD Ipod to try it on, plus the cost of the SSD of course.

I was just curious to see if anyone had done the SSD modification before. I am aware of the Compact Flash mod. But it seems that large capacity CF cards are similarly priced to SSDs. e.g. 32GB CF card is £169 locally.

[LambdaCalculus]

The other problem is finding a 1.8" SSD with a ZIF connector, which is what the iPod video uses. If you can find a drive with this type of connector, you're good to go.

[peteswensson]

About a year ago I tried upgrading an iriver H340 with a Samsung 1.8" PATA 32GB SSD.  It didn't work.  The CF-modified bootloader works fine with CF, and though my computer recognized the SSD, the Rockboxed iriver did not.  Perhaps that SSD has a different sector size than the iriver wants to see?  Just speculation.

So I have a $350 SSD sitting around that I can't use.  Maybe I'll get an external 1.8" drive enclosure for about $15-20 and have a small and pricey (but fast!) portable drive.

[Multiplex]

32GB CF card is £169 locally.

I'm guessing you're in the UK as you use the £ symbol so 32Gig cards are available for a lot less than that, I did think about getting an iPod mini and putting a CF card in for use in the car (it has an iPod dock and 32Gig is big enough for all my music) - check out the treads for which cards are compatible and check prices, the one I was looking at is out of stock but is about £55 at 7 Day Shop.

I didn't go for it in the end because the operation from  the head unit is not very good (Mk5 Golf).

[Angus_NB]

I have a 2G iPOD Mini with a 32 GB Transcend CF card in it.  The card was under $100 CDN.  Works great in my truck.

The SSD I used to upgrade my Sony Vaio P UMPC with is a 64GB PATA device which fits in the 1.8 inch space vacated by the 1.8 inch Toshiba HDD.
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What brand / model?