500gb msata in an IPOD 5.5 gen

[stevenspruce]

Good morning all.

I do realise there a plenty of posts regarding msata but some are quite old and honestly, I'm struggling to see the wood through the trees.

I have a 5.5 gen ipod, a Samsung 860 evo 500gb msata card and a board from iflash.

It was all going so well; Rockbox installed and I could see the 480gb (ish) in the settings menu.

However when I loaded up a few files and then booted up rockbox I had several errors (11 and 32 I think).

Is my combination of gear a lost cause?  I understand there may be 'patches' but I don't know whether a) they will fix my problem and b) how to actually apply a patch.

Any help or advice would be appreciated as I would love to get this up and running.

[saratoga]

You can search the forums and see if anyone has tried that combination of hardware before, but in general adapters often do not work correctly with the existing storage drivers.

[LambdaCalculus]

Speaking from personal experience here: I also tried one of those iFlash mSATA adapters out in an iPod Video, with a 128GB SSD. While installation isn't so bad, I've had nothing but pain and suffering trying to get Rockbox working on this combination. Some of the issues I've experienced include:

• Restoring the device in iTunes wasn't an issue, but the device never showed up afterwards as a proper FAT32 volume on my Linux desktop. If I tried formatting the partition as FAT32, the iPod's firmware would complain and ask me to restore it again, even if I backup its folders beforehand.
• Related to the first point above, I could install Rockbox on the iPod, but then on startup, the bootloader would scream about not being able to find a FAT32 volume.
• Removing the mSATA drive from the adapter and putting it into an enclosure to examine in GParted revealed that the drive had an "Unknown" filesystem on its primary partition. Evoking "fdisk -l" in the terminal showed me that the drive (let's call it /dev/sdi for convenience's sake) had two partitions: "/dev/sdi1" and "/dev/sdi2". /dev/sdi1 was approximately 100MB big, which is correct, and is an unknown filesystem, which is also correct; this is the iPod firmware partition. /dev/sdi2, on the other hand, was also an unknown filesystem, and was the rest of the volume's capacity. This isn't correct; the larger partition should be either FAT32 or HFS+, depending on if it was restored in Windows or a Mac.
  

I finally gave up on getting the iFlash to work after a while and decided to pick up a 128GB SSD I found on Amazon for pretty cheap: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TPLKQLS/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_10?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

I went with this SSD for two reasons: one, it's the correct size and connector for the iPod Video (and the Classic, in turn!), and two, since it's a proper PATA device, it'll function just as a hard drive should. And sure enough, it hasn't given me one lick of trouble at all since it's been in my iPod Video. I do get improved battery life and the peace of mind that my iPod has no moving parts in it anymore, and I also get expanded capacity for music, and Rockbox happily functions with it in place. If anything, an SSD like this is a far more viable option for those wanting to make their iPods solid state, since you're ensured better compatibility and it's good for those on a budget.

[Bilgus]

LambdaCalculus Great Advice!
I quoted you in the stickies for the iFlash adapters

[stevenspruce]

Interesting comments.  Sounds like I have made a mistake going for the msata option.

[LambdaCalculus]

Don't consider it a complete bust. Keep the mSATA SSD for another device that can make use of it and just get the SSD I recommended. Yeah, you won't have the massive storage option, but at least you'll have an iPod with no moving parts in it and better guarantee of compatibility.

[cereal_killer]

I can confirm that a 256GB Super Talent DuraDrive ZT3 also works with an iPod Video. But as far as I know they are hard to find today. There is also a 256GB ZT4 which also has a ZIF connector, but I don't know if this works.

[stevenspruce]

Hi, a question for LambdaCalculus.  Did you use an Iflash adapter to connect your SSD to the ipod?

[LambdaCalculus]

The SSD I have is a PATA device with a ZIF connector on it. No adapters needed; just swap drives, restore in iTunes, and you're ready to install Rockbox.