iPod SSD Choices

[Outland]

I continue to be very happy with RockBox on my iPod Video. I don't see it mentioned often, but the Apple OF has never been able to support the data throughput required for uninterrupted lossless music playback over long times. I've experienced this with two independent iPods. I've tried removing album art, encoding with iTunes only, etc. Eventually it will run out of buffer and briefly pause. This is why I got RockBox, and haven't had the issue since.

However, the HDD is too small and 15+ years old. I am aware of many choices for going solid state, such as the Tarkan adapters and the (seemingly resolved) myriad of issues of them with RockBox. I've also seen choices for CF, mSATA, etc.

I could not find an appropriate topic, so I thought it was worth asking. What is the most RockBox-friendly choice for going solid state? I imagine it is not the Tarkan adapters.

[philden]

How big do you want to go with your storage? My experience is that a 7th Gen is best for 1TB and upwards. Do you have a GB model with 32Mb of RAM or 60/80GB with 64Mb? The former will restrict you also.

I do use Tarkan iFlash Quads on my 3rd and 7th Gen Ipods without issues.

[Outland]

How big do you want to go with your storage?

>256GB would be fine. I have a 30GB 5.5 (32MB RAM).

Seems like MicroSD is the cheapest way to get high-capacity storage. Before Tarkan was made to work with RB in 2021, what did everyone use?

[Frankenpod]

I think Tarkan adaptors have always been the best option - though not flawless.  RB changes may have made them work better than they did before, but even before that they worked tolerably well, as long as you didn't sync in RB mode.

The "generic" adaptors are not very reliable, and only work for 128gb or below, and, in my experience, only in 5th gens.  They are also physically thicker so you can't get a custom battery in there with them.

  There seems to be a new iFlash 'knockoff' available from  Chinese sellers on Ebay very recently - they even naughtily use the iFlash name (which I can't believe is strictly legal for them to do).  Wouldn't risk it myself, as they aren't any cheaper than Tarkan's at the moment - at least once postage is included (plus the "intellectual property" status of them seems as if it might be a bit questionable)

The other option is to use an SSD of a type that can be connected natively to the iPod ZIF interface, without needing an adaptor.  I gather some people have made that work, but I don't know much about it.

[Outland]

Thanks for the reply!

I think Tarkan adaptors have always been the best option - though not flawless.  RB changes may have made them work better than they did before, but even before that they worked tolerably well, as long as you didn't sync in RB mode.

At the time, I was interested in trying but the understanding I formed was that the Tarkan adapters would corrupt if RB writes to them because of the power-saving differences between them and the HDDs. Some people tried to sync with the OF only and this would temporarily slow down corruption, but RB will still write on its own, such as for playlists and basic system things, and eventually the iPod will corrupt itself anyway.

So I believe that the Tarkan adapters were unusable until 2021 when the issues were fixed, and I'm just curious if there were other adapters in use at the time. Looking back on old threads, the developers of RB would say "use adapters known to work with RB, not Tarkan." But I wonder what those are...

This is beyond the scope of the thread, but it appears that there's a real dearth of dedicated portable players, so I'm stuck with using my old iPod+RB. There are a few that I'm aware of, like HiBy, Shanling, Hidisz, the Sony players, and so on, but their quality control, apart from Sony, seems really low according to various reviews. I may just give one of those a shot anyways, but I'm not optimistic. I had tried the Sony players earlier this year, but they have a compromised audio path where the audio fades in and out, so I returned mine.

Not sure I ever expected my old iPod would be my last HDD in regular service.

[chris_s]

CompactFlash cards were your best bet before 2021. You shouldn't run into any issues using Rockbox with them. Their only disadvantage is how expensive they are and that larger sizes aren't available (anymore): you'll have trouble finding anything larger than 256GB.

These days, iFlash Solo+SD also work very well for me using the current version of Rockbox on the iPod video and 4G, but ymmv.

As for iPod alternatives, the M3K hardware is very enjoyable to use with Rockbox and of surprisingly high-quality, if you can still manage to get one, even though the iPod's input mechanism and transflective display still seem superior to me for a lot of use cases on-the-go.

[Outland]

CompactFlash cards were your best bet before 2021.

Ah, case closed then! Maybe I'll pick up a Tarkan adapter then, or just try a new DAP.

And thanks for the recommendation! FiiO was also another brand I heard talked about quite a bit. You're right about the display, the Sony NW-A55 had the same problem compared to the iPod.