[cmarti]

Currently there is no mSATA SSD that is bigger than 1TB. AFAIK Samsung EVO is the only 1TB mSATA SSD available (all others are 512GB or less).

cmarti, please kindly comment:

Is Tarkan aware that:

1) 500GB mSATA SSD can run for >8 hrs with BWRB and 5.5 gen (with good battery)?
and
2) From BeyondWind's statement, it seems that all we need for 1TB mSATA is a better ZIF-mSATA adapter (generic mSATA adapters may not be able to provide stable power to a 1TB drive) and maybe better battery.

If Tarkan is not aware of the above info, I would contact him and provide a summary. If Tarkan can make a better ZIF-mSATA adapter, that would be great.

Do you know if Tarkan's upcoming adapter is 2.5'' SATA, 3.5'' SATA or mSATA (where it connects to hard drive)?
It is hard to believe that Tarkan is using 2.5'' SATA or anything bigger (battery life / portability may suffer).

I have forwarded your questions to Tarkan, I will let you know once he responds.

 

[DMinor]

Rotate the mSATA by 90 degree and you can fit a pair of 1TB mSATA drives in one ipod with a newly-designed adapter. Now you have a 2TB ipod.
 
If you have the ipod with the fat back plate, you may be able to stack another pair of 1TB msata's and now you have a 4TB ipod. Please don't ask for more GB's. 

 

[cmarti]

@ cmarti,

I am not sure how Tarkan's new adapter can work with a 3TB hard drive, unless he uses a large 3.5" SATA adapter along with a large external battery (or external wall wart). With 1.5 TB, a medium sized 2.5" SATA can be used - it is still difficult to get >6 hrs of battery life without external battery/power though.

Tarkan mentioned better power saving and stability than mSATA. So I assume: 
1) Tarkan is talking about portable use (battery instead of wall wart);
2) Tarkan knows about BeyondWind's Rockbox patch (BWRB) and that ~500GB  mSATA SSD can run stably for >8 hrs under BWRB?

I could not image how Tarkan can portably run a 1.5TB SATA drive for more than 8 hrs. I would love to believe that though - I would be one of the first to jump onto it if it works!

Edit:
Tarkan was using wall wart and stock Apply firmware (he said he would try Rockbox but have not) with his 1TB iPod:
http://www.tarkan.info/20140324/tutorials/teaser-the-1tb-ipod

 
I invited Tarkan to join the discussion, someone like him would be very beneficial to our community.
 
Here's Tarkan's answers:
 
Hi,
 
Answered as numbered :-
 
1) I am not really doing any testing with RockBox, but with the original firmware I am getting good battery life. My testing has been focused on the 6g/7g at the moment so I only have data for them - with the 850mAh battery I am getting 30Hours of music playback with a 480Gb mSata drive.
 
2) The Generic mSata boards are total rubbish - to list a few of these issues :-  the IDE interface is not ATAPI spec, the circuit layout introduces too much slew between the signals, the mSata interface suffers from too much jitter, the crystal clock has very high jitter, the digital & analog & Sata power supplies are not isolated from one another. This all results in a lot of CRC error checking on the Sata interface and retry errors on the IDE side, UDMA transfer delays and pauses.
 
I never tested the generic mSata boards in the iPod so cannot say if it is these adapters which are causing problems with the 1Tb, however during my development work using my own board I had no issues with the 5g/5.5g and 1Tb drives, however I do think it is not a comfortable mix - the 6g/7g make a better combination - for various reason.
 
3) Sata is Sata, my board will work with any Sata based drive -  the prototypes will be mSata, but you will also be able to use SATA (3.5" & 2.5") drives using an external supply for the drive. Would be a great customisation project for someone to make an elegant housing to hold the iPod and a 3Tb drive!!
 
regards, Tarkan

 

[zzffnn]

^ Great news! mSATA adapter and 30 hours playback with 480GB! I will buy 2 of those!!
It looks like Tarkan's adapter eliminates the hardware problem at its source and may work even better than BeyondWind's Rockbox patch (you may not even need the patch with Tarkan's new adapter).
Thank you Tarkan and cmarti!!

 

[MParrott]

^ Great news! mSATA adapter and 30 hours playback with 480GB! I will buy 2 of those!!
It looks like Tarkan's adapter eliminates the hardware problem at its source and may work even better than BeyondWind's Rockbox patch (you may not even need the patch with Tarkan's new adapter).
Thank you Tarkan and cmarti!!

Always been my favorite... Get them while I got em... 128GB with Tarkan iFlash

 

[dr408517]

Has anyone put together a good FAQ or guide for upgrading iPods to SSDs? Like what drives are compatible, whether you have to use Rockbox, etc.?

I'm really interested in getting a used ipod and throwing a big SSD in it to keep in my car, but the information on how to do this is spread out among many posts and forums. It's difficult to get a handle on what exactly can be done and how to do it.

I've tested several media in the car (toyota) and only the tarkan+128g SD and the KingSpec 128g mods of v6 and v7 work well. The mSata ipod mods 256g and above require RockBox to function well, and I have not had success in the car. Search on my posts, and you will find a detailed post for building an mSata v5 or v5.5. I am traveling on business now, and 'road testing' the mSata Terapod and it has been fabulous. I have reached 6 hours of play time, with battery life still showing before I turned it off.

The biggest SSD i have built is a V5.5 SuperTalent, but i am not satisfied with the performance in the car. It gets stuck in infinite search loops and skips a lot. I built a 256g sd+tarkan v7 and v5.x, but they were terribly unstable.

 

[dr408517]

Rotate the mSATA by 90 degree and you can fit a pair of 1TB mSATA drives in one ipod with a newly-designed adapter. Now you have a 2TB ipod.

If you have the ipod with the fat back plate, you may be able to stack another pair of 1TB msata's and now you have a 4TB ipod. Please don't ask for more GB's.  :wink_face:

Ah, yes, just what we all need. A $2500 ipod with more storage than a laptop

 

[kantana]

Ah, yes, just what we all need. A $2500 ipod with more storage than a laptop

LOL, unless Apple changes and natively supports flac, DSD etc it doesn't matter how much storage they fit in their iOS products.  I gave up on iPhone, iPod, iPad etc since they won't support other formats natively, mkv, flac, dsf, dff etc

 

[davidcotton]

   
I invited Tarkan to join the discussion, someone like him would be very beneficial to our community.
 
Here's Tarkan's answers:
 
Hi,
 
Answered as numbered :-
 
1) I am not really doing any testing with RockBox, but with the original firmware I am getting good battery life. My testing has been focused on the 6g/7g at the moment so I only have data for them - with the 850mAh battery I am getting 30Hours of music playback with a 480Gb mSata drive.
 
2) The Generic mSata boards are total rubbish - to list a few of these issues :-  the IDE interface is not ATAPI spec, the circuit layout introduces too much slew between the signals, the mSata interface suffers from too much jitter, the crystal clock has very high jitter, the digital & analog & Sata power supplies are not isolated from one another. This all results in a lot of CRC error checking on the Sata interface and retry errors on the IDE side, UDMA transfer delays and pauses.
 
I never tested the generic mSata boards in the iPod so cannot say if it is these adapters which are causing problems with the 1Tb, however during my development work using my own board I had no issues with the 5g/5.5g and 1Tb drives, however I do think it is not a comfortable mix - the 6g/7g make a better combination - for various reason.
 
3) Sata is Sata, my board will work with any Sata based drive -  the prototypes will be mSata, but you will also be able to use SATA (3.5" & 2.5") drives using an external supply for the drive. Would be a great customisation project for someone to make an elegant housing to hold the iPod and a 3Tb drive!!
 
regards, Tarkan

Excellent news on the 7th gen.  I know the 5's are regarded as better for the sound quality but the fact is these players are getting rather long in the tooth now. 

 

[DMinor]

I've tested several media in the car (toyota) and only the tarkan+128g SD and the KingSpec 128g mods of v6 and v7 work well. The mSata ipod mods 256g and above require RockBox to function well, and I have not had success in the car. Search on my posts, and you will find a detailed post for building an mSata v5 or v5.5. I am traveling on business now, and 'road testing' the mSata Terapod and it has been fabulous. I have reached 6 hours of play time, with battery life still showing before I turned it off.
 

 
Are you using the Miliamp 850 mAh battery for your terapod?
 

  LOL, unless Apple changes and natively supports flac, DSD etc it doesn't matter how much storage they fit in their iOS products.  I gave up on iPhone, iPod, iPad etc since they won't support other formats natively, mkv, flac, dsf, dff etc

 
flac is a none issue (with RB) unless you love the iTune crap. 
 

 
Excellent news on the 7th gen.  I know the 5's are regarded as better for the sound quality but the fact is these players are getting rather long in the tooth now. 

 
Honestly I think these old 5g's are built like tank from my own experience. I am wondering if new logic boards are still being made for these ipods.

 

[dr408517]

Are you using the Miliamp 850 mAh battery for your terapod?


flac is a none issue (with RB) unless you love the iTune crap. 


Honestly I think these old 5g's are built like tank from my own experience. I am wondering if new logic boards are still being made for these ipods.

-Yes, using the Milliamp 850mah battery in the Terapod. I hit the 7 hour mark today, before I chickened out and recharged it. Works like a champ. Oddly, i am using a generic chinese thin 650mah in the 480g and it is working great. I am traveling now, but when i get home i am going to build a U2 thin Terapod and sell the rest of the herd.

And yes, the 5g's are tanks. I don't watch movies on an ipod. I don't read books on the ipod. I don't play games, track my calendar or take notes on my ipod. I want to listen to music and mod the hell out of this thing. If Tarkan succeeds with the 7g upgrade, I'll start testing it. But until then, the 5g suits me fine.

 

[cmarti]

   
Are you using the Miliamp 850 mAh battery for your terapod?
 

 

-Yes, using the Milliamp 850mah battery in the Terapod. I hit the 7 hour mark today, before I chickened out and recharged it. Works like a champ. 

 
I received my Milliamp 850mAh yesterday, I am amazed on how good the battery really is. Voltage drops are less with this battery, I wonder how good the slim one is...
 

 

 

[cmarti]

   
Are you using the Miliamp 850 mAh battery for your terapod?
 

 

-Yes, using the Milliamp 850mah battery in the Terapod. I hit the 7 hour mark today, before I chickened out and recharged it. Works like a champ. 

 
I received my Milliamp 850mAh yesterday, I am amazed on how good the battery really is. Voltage drops are less with this battery, I wonder how good the slim one is...
 

 

 

[DMinor]

Glad you guys are getting good results from the Miliamp's. This battery makes that so-so adapter look good.
 
Honestly, with a Miliamp, a capless 480GB (or 1 TB) mSATA diymod, a capless UHA (or amp with the same design concept) and a pair of reference dynamic phones - you will need to find another hobby.

 
The stock Classic 7g is quite good, iMO better than the stock 5g, due to a more powerful amp section and flat frequency response. But with the transparency from that 1-2 punch, the stock classic 7g or my iphone 4s doesn't come close (lacking space and fullness of sound).

 

[gav007]

You guys should also try Cameron Sino batteries because they are cheaper and provide a good performance too.