SSD sold by iPod Parts UK

[graemehh]

Does anyone have any experience of fitting the custom built SSD's sold by iPod Parts UK to an iPod?

https://ipodparts.co.uk/product/ipod-classic-solid-state-drives/

I believe it is based around an M.2 board. Is it a better alternative to the iFlash adapter?

Thanks

[rockbox_dev123]

Whilst I've no experience with this exact offering I have experience with using mSATA drives in iPods. The drive in your link looks no different to the many similar offerings on AliExpress.

My advice would be to use an SD card with an iFlash adapter. Why?


Before SD card support was mature in Rockbox there were valid reasons for using mSATA drives. However, there is no reason not to use them now.

The biggest drawback of SATA drives is the high power consumption. You can check the iFlash website for detailed power draw stats between CompactFlash, mSATA and SD.

They're also bulky and can prevent using a slim back.

[graemehh]

Thank you for the advice.

I've read a lot of negative comments about iFlash adapters and SD cards on these forums so I was wondering if there is a better alternative?


Initially I just want 256GB. All my digital music is in FLAC, WAV and AIFF files, that is why I want to use Rockbox. If 256GB works OK I might expand up to 1TB.

[rockbox_dev123]

If money is no object and you can bear a thick case back then I would get a 256GB Compact Flash card and a 3000mAh battery. Compact Flash uses the same interface (PATA) as the original ZIF hard drives. They have good performance, low heat and low power draw. There are no larger cards available than this so if you want more storage then it's either SD or SSD (mSATA/NVMe).

Recommended reading:
https://www.iflash.xyz/runtime-shootout-2016-quad-dual-solo-msata-vs-original-hard-drive/

[graemehh]

Thanks again.

That article was well worth reading.

CF cards, ouch, very expensive.

[Frankenpod]

You aren't wrong that iFlash adaptors can be troublesome.  I get the impression that RB devs have learned more about that than they would have liked to.  And I've heard, but not from personal experience, that SSDs with a native ZIF interferface work more reliably.  SSDs do seem to have a surprisingly high power draw, compared to the original 1.4" hard drives, though.

If you only need 256GB there's also the 240GB Toshiba 1.4" double-platter hard drive, but that now seems to be vanishingly-rare (have a couple and I'm hanging on to them!).

Main thing with the iFlash seems to be that the work to get round their limitations (failure to properly implement the cache flushing commands?) has the knock-on effect of increasing their power consumption, so I'm not sure the data  in that linked 2016 article would still apply.

[graemehh]

Thanks rockbox_dev123, Frankenpod and also a post by cereal_killer.

I found this ZIF SSD on Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CGF77YVK/?coliid=IFPSWMJVHNTF4&colid=LW308H51O0EB&psc=1&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_dp_it

It looks like it might work and is cheaper than the equivalent CF card but still a bit pricey.

On balance (and budget), I'm going for an iFlash adapter and single 256G SD card.

[graemehh]

In the end, I used the imCort dual micro SD card adapter sold by moonlit.market (https://moonlit.market/products/imcort-sd-card-adapter-for-the-ipod-classic-classic-connect) along with two 128GB Kingston Canvas Go! Plus micro SD cards and a slim 3000mA/h battery (yes, I know that it will not really be 3000mA/H but it fits). All in a 30Gb (slim) 5th generation iPod classic.

I only have a MAC and at the moment I can not load RockBox. The ipodcatcher script does not run on my MAC so I can not go down the manual conversion to FAT32 route! Instead I'm canvasing friends to see if anyone has a windows machine with iTunes.

As there are so many MAC users now, is it not possible to write a RockBox version that will load onto a MAC formatted iPod with ease?

At the moment, the iPod conversion is working fine with very good battery life, however I will get RockBox loaded so that I can play FLAC files.

[speachy]

> As there are so many MAC users now, is it not possible to write a RockBox version that will load onto a MAC formatted iPod with ease?

Ah yes, the "why don't you nerd harder" appeal.

"load onto Mac formatted iPods" means implementing native read/write support for the Mac-only HFS+ filesystem.  This represents a _major_ undertaking even before the completely not-fully-undestood proprietary (and dead-end) nature of HFS+ is considered -- Last I checked, even Linux cannot reliably write to HFS+ filesystems.

Then consider that Macs can read FAT32 (ie "windows formatted") iPods, but not the other way around....

Personally, I have zero interest in investing time and effort into a completely proprietary, deliberately-hostile-to-free-software platform.

EDIT:  Grammar

[graemehh]

It was not intended as criticism of everyone who works hard on RockBox, but as a newbie to the platform, it was a failure to understand the complexities and sublties of the problems involved.
 

[rockbox_dev123]

I don't think it was stated anywhere that HFS+ was wanted. If he is trying to get access to a Windows PC then I assume he just wants a working FAT32 setup?


FWIW ipodpatcher can be compiled on macOS and works without issue. A pre compiled binary is included with the macOS Rockbox utility.

See here:
https://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,54860.msg253676.html#msg253676

[EHOT]

You aren't wrong that iFlash adaptors can be troublesome.

I have been using two iPods every day for several months- Classic 7 and Video 5.5, they both work with flash-Quad, one with 256Gb Samsung and the other with Kingston 256Gb. I have never noticed any problems or errors related to the adapter. Everything works fine, used with the latest version of RockBox

[Frankenpod]

You aren't wrong that iFlash adaptors can be troublesome.

I have been using two iPods every day for several months- Classic 7 and Video 5.5, they both work with flash-Quad, one with 256Gb Samsung and the other with Kingston 256Gb. I have never noticed any problems or errors related to the adapter. Everything works fine, used with the latest version of RockBox

Been faffing around with them for over a decade now.  Don't want to mention how many I currently have, it's an embarrassingly excessive number (the majority of them 7.5gens).  They do work eventually, but had so many weird issues with them over the years.  In particular certain combos of cards (different brands and capacities) will sometimes refuse to work together in the same ipod, but work fine if you rearrange them in different permutations in different ipods.  The sheer variety of different weird failure modes you can encounter is amazing to me.

Have been experimenting with getting the closest I can to the 2TiB limit.  1TB+3x400GB or 1500+512+128+32 seem to be the closest one can get without going over that limit (if you exceed it by even a few GB it won't restore properly).   Significantly 2TiB is not the same as 2TB - that confused me for a while.

[speachy]

Have been experimenting with getting the closest I can to the 2TiB limit.  1TB+3x400GB or 1500+512+128+32 seem to be the closest one can get without going over that limit (if you exceed it by even a few GB it won't restore properly).   Significantly 2TiB is not the same as 2TB - that confused me for a while.

I'd be curious to see what >2TiB on one of these adapters would result in when looked at on a PC running Linux.  (there are ZIF-to-ATA adapters out there)

(Just want to make sure that if it doesn't work, it's due to the SD adapter being braindead, rather than a problem with Rockbox itself)

[Frankenpod]

The last one I tried >2TiB was an iFlash quad with 1500, 512, 128, 64 cards.  Had to replace the 64 with a 32 for it to work.  With the 64 in there it would restore (with iTunes under windows) as 27GiB (!).  Which is pretty consistent with what happened with all my previous experiments with exceeding 2TiB.

  With the 32GB card instead it restored OK and rockbox reports it as 2045GiB (which I guess is a smidgeon below the 2TiB, or 2048GiB, limit, so probably the best one can hope for).

 Didn't try the first one with Linux, Windows definitely could only see 27GiB, no matter what way I tried to look at the drive, nor did I try anything clever with putting the iFlash in some other kind of adaptor, only in the iPod (not at all sure what the computer would see if one did that, given that the ipod, to the limited degree I understand it, does some weirdness that obfuscates what the drive actually is and presents something quasi-fictional to the computer?).

Maybe will give that a go the next one I build.