Official Ipod Video / Classic 5g+5.5g+6g+6.5g+7g SSD Mod thread
Oct 23, 2012 at 7:34 PM Post #481 of 10,664
Quote:
Hi,
 
right now iam really frustrated. I bought a ipod classic 6th gen 80gb as defective. The hdd is surely broken. I also bought a Kingspec SSD 128gb (KSD-ZF18.1-128MJ).
The SSD is recognized in the diagnosticmode but on startup i got the red x. Is my purpose even possible or may be anything else broke??? Many thanks and sorry for my bad english :wink:


How do you know the HDD is broken? It could be the logic board problem. If it works with another good HDD, then you can conclude the problem with the HDD. But if the problem is with the logic board, then anything you do for the drive (HDD or SSD) won't work.
 
Oct 23, 2012 at 8:30 PM Post #482 of 10,664
I've seen a lot of reports of the Kingspec SSDs not working in the iPod Video. It is not necessarily a dud drive and will work in a laptop, but it will be too far out of spec for an iPod. There's probably nothing you can do about that except get another drive.

(Edit: Missed the part about you receiving the iPod as defective. You should try a known-good drive in the iPod before writing off the logic board, but don't get your hopes up over that Kingspec drive.)
 
Oct 23, 2012 at 10:25 PM Post #483 of 10,664
Quote:
Hi,
 
right now iam really frustrated. I bought a ipod classic 6th gen 80gb as defective. The hdd is surely broken. I also bought a Kingspec SSD 128gb (KSD-ZF18.1-128MJ).
The SSD is recognized in the diagnosticmode but on startup i got the red x. Is my purpose even possible or may be anything else broke??? Many thanks and sorry for my bad english :wink:

You didn't mention anything about connecting the iPod to iTunes after the hard drive swap. Did you put it in recovery and connected it the the computer and see if iTunes can see it?
 
Oct 24, 2012 at 6:38 AM Post #484 of 10,664
I thought the hdd is broken, because it wasn't recognized in the diagnostic mode (failed to open device) and i don't felt it spinning. When i set the ipod in recovery mode the ipod is recognized by itunes. It says to restore and after that the ipod restarts and end up with the red x. So i ordered a Supertalent SSD today and check if it will work. Many thanks for your replies!
 
Oct 24, 2012 at 6:39 PM Post #487 of 10,664
Quote:
Can someone who successfully installed the SSD confirm if copying files to the SSD is much faster than copying files to HDD?
 
Thanks

It shouldn't be.. You are bottlenecked by USB bandwidth not hard drive speed when you are copying files to the IPod.
 
Oct 24, 2012 at 10:04 PM Post #488 of 10,664
It shouldn't be.. You are bottlenecked by USB bandwidth not hard drive speed when you are copying files to the IPod.

That's good to know. Now I am waiting for hdd failure from any one of my three iPod 5g's so I can try the ssd. The chance is probably slim because up to this date I have not experienced any HDD failure with my pods.
 
Oct 24, 2012 at 10:14 PM Post #489 of 10,664
I can only provide anecdata, but writing to an SSD seemed faster. If I recall correctly, writing 27 GB to my video iPod 5G took approximately an hour with the HD, about 40 minutes with the SSD. Same iPod, same computer, same cables; only the drive was different.

When using the iPod, seek time and latency are among the main advantages of the SSD, and that's harder to quantify since you're usually comparing fractions of seconds to fractions of seconds; it's easier to say the iPod feels faster with an SSD on board, even though the basic functions (navigating menus, listening to music) aren't affected by the type of drive installed.
 
Oct 25, 2012 at 12:31 AM Post #490 of 10,664
Quote:
I can only provide anecdata, but writing to an SSD seemed faster. If I recall correctly, writing 27 GB to my video iPod 5G took approximately an hour with the HD, about 40 minutes with the SSD. Same iPod, same computer, same cables; only the drive was different.
When using the iPod, seek time and latency are among the main advantages of the SSD, and that's harder to quantify since you're usually comparing fractions of seconds to fractions of seconds; it's easier to say the iPod feels faster with an SSD on board, even though the basic functions (navigating menus, listening to music) aren't affected by the type of drive installed.

There could be lots of explanations for that. USB 2.0 speeds are 60MB/s. I couldn't find the specs on the stock Ipod HDD, but I found found a cheap Toshiba replacement drive that was 52 MB/s at 3600 RPM, the stock HDDs are 4200, so the transfers speeds on the stock HDD should be just above USB 2.0 speeds. The difference in time could be computer related, or could be because of fragmentation, or maybe the HDD really is slower than the USB, who knows. Theoretical throughputs are theoretical. Honestly though, since USB 2.0 is involved, probably transfer speeds shouldn't really be factored in to the SDD decision because they won't be sped up very much.
 
I completely agree with the second part of your post. Well said. Also, I feel as though not having to worry about shock is a big big advantage. Battery should be better. These HDDs are so slow that I really don't know how much difference there is in battery life. I'm sure there's information in this thread about it.
 
Oct 25, 2012 at 4:43 AM Post #491 of 10,664
The data writes to both drives was also identical, and both drives were started freshly-formatted. (I had a 30 GB iPod 5G; it died, I bought a 60 GB iPod 5G to replace it and used the old iTunes library on it; two weeks later, I removed the stock 60 GB drive and installed a 128 GB SSD and copied the same iTunes library to it again). So the comparison above is about as far as I could make one even if I had done it on purpose; only thing I hadn't done was mark start and end times for both copy runs, which is why I don't remain totally certain about actual elapsed times.
 
Oct 25, 2012 at 12:06 PM Post #492 of 10,664
I'm not trying to argue with you 
tongue.gif
. They were also done 2 weeks apart. You could have had other processes running in the background. Your antivirus or Windows could have been updating in the background. You could have had other devices using the same USB header.  
 
Oct 25, 2012 at 6:06 PM Post #493 of 10,664
I'm quite thoroughly frustrated at this point. I obtained two "non-functioning" 256gb Duradrive ZT2 drives. The drives wouldn't detect under Windows, however some investigation on Linux found a corrupted MBR. I secure erased both drives, and re-initialized them with a fresh MBR. I then installed both drives into the same iPod Classic, neither drive gets past the Red X, both drives detect fine, and both drives list their serial number. Neither drive lists SMART information (though I don't think they are supposed to) From there, I decided that it was likely due to the lack of a proper partition structure on the drives, so I went ahead and DD'd the contents of the stock hard drive to the SSD; the iPod stays on the Apple logo a lot longer for the first boot afterward, but then goes to the Red X again. I'm thinking this could be due to that I never put the ipod in windows mode, nor did I rockbox it first.
Any pointers on where I should head? What else might I be able to try?
I understand that the OP states that the 256gb drives are 5v, however as other users have confirmed, as well as Supertalent and their Datasheet says: These are 3.3v drives. The iPod is providing sufficient voltage for the drive to come online - the detection of the drive and its serial number are evidence of that. Also, this is a *brand new* iPod; the stock HDD still works when I put it back in, so the issue is specifically with the SSDs. I'm willing to try pretty much anything.
 
Oct 25, 2012 at 6:44 PM Post #495 of 10,664
Dang, I have two spare 6g iPod classic motherboards, and a 7g iPod classic but no iPod video parts. And unfortunately, I don't know of anyone around these parts with an iPod video that would be willing to let me tinker with it. I'm gonna try rockboxing it and see if I can get rockbox to boot with one of the drives installed. I may end up tinkering around with a hex editor or look into the emcore code to see if I can circumvent what I think is causing the iPod classic's to not recognize ssd's. I have a feeling the lack of SMART reporting on *most* 1.8" drives may have a lot to do with this.
 

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