Problems installing Samsung 128gb SATA SSD in iPod 5.5

[BXP]

Hi. I recently picked up a cheap 1.8" Samsung micro SATA 128GB SSD (MMCRE28GTMXP-MVB) that I thought would be nifty to drop into a custom-cased 5.5 gen iPod video. Looking around I found a ZIF to micro SATA adapter (this one here http://www.amazon.com/1-8-Micro-SATA-Female-Adapter/dp/B004FD5B9I ) that would appear to allow the iPod to talk to the SSD, though I suppose that's not a given. I formatted the SSD to FAT32 before hooking it all up to the iPod and giving it a go.

Problem is, the iPod with the SSD and adapter doesn't want to boot. I can place the iPod in disk mode, and connect to the computer, and here's where it gets a little funny. Windows sees an ipod under the device listing, but only recognizes an unformatted disk drive in windows explorer. Going to disk management shows an unformatted drive with 1.85TB capacity (yes, T B, thought that was odd). When windows tries to format the iPod/SSD combo, it works at it a minute and returns "The disk in drive D cannot be formatted". Tried through iTunes as well, just locks up.

So I'm stumped, wondering if anybody has any thoughts. My guess is that the adapter is mucking up something, as the SSD works just fine hooked up solo through USB, but I guess it could be a lot of things. Anyone tried anything like this before?


 

[Chronon]

I'm pretty sure the iPod doesn't support SATA.  All of the drives I'm aware of that work are PATA.

[BXP]

Well, that was the thought behind the adapter. My other thought was maybe I'd formatted the drive incorrectly, anyone have info on how to properly setup and partition an iPod drive under windows, or even better, a screen shot of the drive on disk management?

I realize this may all be futile, but I'd hate to just throw in the towel without trying everything reasonably possible.

[Chronon]

Restoring in iTunes is the easiest way to create the proper partition layout and formatting.

None of the wording on the page that you linked indicates that the adapter converts from SATA to PATA, so the functionality of this adapter wasn't clear to me.

[yapper]

The product description mentions "This unit allows a 1.8 Micro SATA Drive to be used with a PATA interface."

[Chronon]

Heh.  I guess my morning inattentiveness was the cause of the adapter's intended functionality being unclear.   

If iTunes can't restore it I don't think there's much hope of it working.  There are instructions on the wiki for manually restoring an iPod, but it seems like the SSD isn't being accessed properly when you plug in your iPod, so I'm not confident that it would be a fruitful course of action.

[BXP]

Hmm, bummer. Well, it was worth a shot. 

[Chronon]

If you want to pursue this further it might be worthwhile to drop in on the #rockbox IRC channel.  You will find a higher population of developers there.  Maybe someone will have a clue about what is going wrong.

[BXP]

May have to do that, thanks for the heads up.

[torne]

It sounds like something may be screwing up the sector size. SSDs often have a nonstandard sector size for performance reasons, but the original iPod hard disk *also* has a different nonstandard sector size. The iPod firmware *also* also exports the disk over USB using a *third* sector size which is different to both of the above.

So, some combination of the factors here is probably causing things to miscount the size of the disk.

You might be able to fix it by completely erasing the partition table (with the disk plugged into your PC directly over SATA) and then partitioning it again through the iPod. The disk probably had a partition table already which was written in terms of one sector size, and when mounted through the iPod it's being interpreted as a different sector size. Erasing it should let your OS start over and do the math based on the actual raw drive capacity and the sector size the iPod prefers to use.

[BXP]

So I wiped the existing partition off the SSD through the USB to SATA cable, made certain it was unallocated, then tried popping it back into the iPod. Still no luck, same problems as before. Windows sees an iPod in the device listing, sees an unformatted disk drive under explorer and shows an unallocated 1.85 TB disk in disk management, but fails to format it. The iPod can be put into disk mode, though Itunes doesn't seem to see anything at all. There isn't some specific recovery mode for the iPod I missed is there?
Think this may be a loss.

[torne]

The in-rom disk mode is the recovery mode.

If you can dump the identifying info from the disk (using a utility like hdparm) both while directly connected to your computer, and connected via the iPod, and compare them to see what's different, it might be possible to figure out a next step.

I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope though; it sounds like the converter is doing something that the ipod firmware doesn't like.