64GB 1.8" SSD with ATA-50 connector? - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

penartur · #1 (**permalink**) 02-21-2009, 12:55 PM

Just found this on conics.net: PhotoFast 1.8" standard IDE SSD [64GB] [ PF18Z64GSSDI ] - -=- Conics.Net
Wonder if it will fit into my beloved NW-HD5... will we see a rebirth of all this wonderful legacy HDD-players?
With such a storage (or, better, with 128gb) the only disadvantage of NW-HD5 would be that it doesn't support AAC or some other wide-supported efficient compression formats (of course, MP3 is not such efficient as opposed to AAC/WMA/Atrac3+).
UPD: Japanese amazon offers those for ¥31,320... that is about how much used NW-HD5 costs in our days. Unfortunately, they will not ship it outside of japan.

wuwhere · #2 (**permalink**) 02-21-2009, 04:50 PM

I plan to upgrade my iRiver iHP-120 to 128GB SSD when their prices become affordable.

penartur · #3 (**permalink**) 02-21-2009, 06:31 PM

128GB is already available for about $450 from RunCore. The problem is that it features ZIF connector, not PATA like on old HDDs.
Toshiba ceased production of PATA HDDs when the platters reached 40GB, so largest 5mm HDD available for NW-HD5 is 40GB one, and they're extremely hard to find.
That's great that someone became producing SSDs with such a connector... but there is no 128GB yet

wuwhere · #4 (**permalink**) 02-21-2009, 07:19 PM

Sandisk also announced their SSDs, Sandisk unveils new, faster, bigger laptop SSDs - Engadget

penartur · #5 (**permalink**) 02-22-2009, 08:57 AM

These are with Micro-SATA connector, i.e. fully incompatible with all hdd players (from what i know, older players have ATA-50 connector and newer have ZIF, none with microsata).
There is a lot of SSDs with microsata interface (for a modern subnotebooks/netbooks), some SSDs feature ZIF, but it looks like only PhotoFast are producing SSDs with legacy ATA-50 interface.

wuwhere · #6 (**permalink**) 02-22-2009, 04:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by penartur

These are with Micro-SATA connector, i.e. fully incompatible with all hdd players (from what i know, older players have ATA-50 connector and newer have ZIF, none with microsata).
There is a lot of SSDs with microsata interface (for a modern subnotebooks/netbooks), some SSDs feature ZIF, but it looks like only PhotoFast are producing SSDs with legacy ATA-50 interface.

There are adapters but as far as I know nobody has tried them yet.

roebeet · #7 (**permalink**) 02-22-2009, 08:26 PM

Too steep a price, imo - plus these SSD's are not known to be very speedy. You'd be better off with a CF mod (32GB max, if someone has gotten it to work with your player).

wuwhere · #8 (**permalink**) 02-22-2009, 08:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roebeet

Too steep a price, imo - plus these SSD's are not known to be very speedy. You'd be better off with a CF mod (32GB max, if someone has gotten it to work with your player).

It's been done with an A-Data 32GB CF with an iRiver iHP-120 (or 140?) and it worked. However, he also tried a Transcend 32GB CF and it didn't worked. So on the iRiver iHP-120/140, 32GB CF is a hit or miss deal.

penartur · #9 (**permalink**) 02-22-2009, 11:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roebeet

You'd be better off with a CF mod (32GB max, if someone has gotten it to work with your player).

I've tried to do it with a chinese adapter from dealextreme, but unsuccesfully - nw-hd5 would not boot, just like if hdd is not connected.
After doing some research i came to conclusion that the problem was that CFs i've used weren't compatible with "True IDE mode" or something like that; i was even unable to work with them as with HDDs through CF->ATA 3.5" adapter.
At the time (summer of 2008) there were 32GB CFs available for about $150; but CF with "True IDE mode" feature were sold for $300/8GB, so i've considered such an "upgrade" from 20GB HDD to be a nonsense.

roebeet · #10 (**permalink**) 02-23-2009, 04:47 AM

Or it could also be that the OF just doesn't support the adapter. In my case, I got an 8GB Lexar CF card to work with that Dealextreme adapter + a Gigabeat F series + Rockbox. But even Rockbox wouldn't work right away - I had to update the bootloader with a version that support the CF card setup. I got one of those recent Adorama deals where the 8GB CF card was free after rebate.

penartur · #11 (**permalink**) 02-23-2009, 08:47 AM

Quote:

8GB Lexar CF card

Maybe it have supported "true ide mode"?

Also, afaik, standart cf cards are like floppy/optical disks (that are one large partition itself), not like HDDs (that have MBRs with partition tables); so maybe there just floppy support was introduced in the rockbox bootloader?
Although NW-HD5 is pretty expandable/upgradeable, the firmware, of course, doesn't supports booting with floppy.