Just a brief look at my new product in my iFlash series.
While the iFlash enables the iPod to work with Compact Flash and SDXC cards, the new iFlash-Sata opens up all Sata based storage devices – mSata and externally powered Sata Hard drives and SSD drives.
The iFlash-Sata will work in the Video iPod (5g, 5.5g) and the newer Classics (6g, 6.5g, 7g).
Be warned the current crop of mSata drives are power hungry, so runtimes are not great compared to CF/SDXC – but still worth while if you must have a 1Tb iPod!
Here is some pictures of the mSata configuration.
iFlash-Sata Front
iFlash-Sata side mSata
iFlash-Sata Angled Shot
I have the dual SD adapter in my 5G iPod (video iPod), with a 128GB Card and recently decided to install a new battery.
The original battery (12 years old), was still going strong, but I expected to get a big boost in run time from a replacement.
However, the replacement, bought on Amazon, gives me something like 9 hours of playback. It’s similar to the original one.
I think that it’s been sat on a shelf somewhere for a long time…
Can anyone advise how long I should expect to get out of a new battery, using an SD Card, for music playback?
This sounds about right, I don’t think your battery is faulty. mSATA is known to be more power hungry than other types of SSD. I prefer to top my ipod up frequently rather than allow it to drain down as lithium technology in general is happier that way and your battery will live longer
Hi,
Thanks for the reply.
I’m not using an SSD though – I have the dual SD adapter, fitted with one card at the moment.
I’m pretty sure that a brand new battery should last longer than the previous battery, which is 12 years old.
I only just replaced the battery, so I know the runtimes for the same setup, but with the old battery.
I’m also assuming that since battery technology has moved on in the last 12 years, that a new one should be able to supply more juice.
Does anyone know of any benchmarks for that this iPod (5G)with the dual SD adapter?
SSD = Solid State Drive, so whether SD/micro SD/mSATA etc they all have no moving parts like a mechanical HDD
@Alex benchmark for the various types of card are all in this space https://www.iflash.xyz/runtime-shootout-2016-quad-dual-solo-msata-vs-original-hard-drive/
@Dan It will be the battery. I put a new battery in mune (500gig mSATA) and on shuffling I can watch the battery level drop. If you are going to swap out the battery I would advocate getting the deeper back case from Ebay and getting the larger (more powerful) battery, which is what I would do next time
I dunno what I’m doing wrong, but I purchased the iflash SATA and a 120GB Kingston mSATA drive to replace the 80GB HDD in my 6th Gen Classic. It does not work. I use a PC, and formatted the drive to FAT32 and when I plug it into my iPod it just flashes the between the grey screen with the Apple logo and a black screen. It works with the old HDD, I plugged it in for comparison, but I just can’t seem to get it to work. I even tried it without the SSD in the adapter and it just goes to the grey screen with the red x, directing me to Apple’s iPod support page. Any assistance would be great.
Thanks
@Dan – If the iPod cannot complete the boot up cycle with the mSata drive installed then it is probably your battery. The start-up current of mSata drives is very high, and the battery condition has to be good.
Make sure your battery is fully charged – you have the original HDD, so bootup with that and leave the iPod on charge for several hours, see if that helps.
hmmm, i think i am doing something wrong.
Got an iflash and a samsung 850 EVO 250gb to put into my 5.5 classic.
I have formatted the drive with an external adapter and then dropped it into the ipod.
But, I can’t get it to work, i had it briefly in disc mode, but when connected to the computer it wasn’t recognised…until i disconnected it, then a message showed up that an ipod was connected to the computer. Very strange.
Have re-formatted it again and put it in the ipod and now i can’t get beyond the sad face screen.
Used Windows 8 to format with, could this be it?
Are there any special other things to think about when formatting?
Any help would be MUCH appreciated!
MAny thanks in advance
@Milton – You don’t really need to format anything, and doing so can cause them drives to enter Power Loss Mode. Did you use an mSata to Sata adapter or USB type?
Sad face could be a few things – Battery level to low to power up the mSata drive, or Drive in Power Loss Mode, or Faulty HDD ribbon.
Oh, it seems every post i’ve read about how to do this told me to format the drive on a windows machine to FAT32 format and then put it into the iPod, so this isn’t the case?
Should I then just wipe the drive and put it in? I used a mSata to USB adapter, and the drive is working/recognised when it is in the adapter.
Battery levels should be fine, it’s new and fully charged.
I thought the HDD cable could be faulty so I’ve already ordered some a new one to see if that makes a difference
Any other thoughts that i need to keep in mind?
@ Milton You are correct, all info’s do say FAT32 format and I believe that is because many users are PC biased. If you drive a Mac there is no imperative to use FAT32, you can format the drive to FAT32 or OSX using Disk Utility. If you just install the drive in your ipod you should be prompted to format it and I don’t believe you need a special USB enclosure, though if you are doing a lot of these it could be useful as they are cheap enough.
@Support….I think reducing size of playlist and killing video files on my 7th gen ipod has resoved the issue and it now shuffles again
Hello. Rockbox 3.14 is out – has anyone tried it with the iFlash-Sata? I had to use an modified build when I first set mine up in 2015, but I don’t find if it can just be used with latest Rockbox or if I have to wait for someone to modify Rockbox to work with mSATA adapters.
@ModemJunki – I had a quick look at the full changelog and cannot see any commits made to address issues with solid state drives. So it might be worth trying but keep a copy of your old .rockbox folder/installation as it might not work.
I have the adapter and a Samsung 500g mSATA drive installed in my ipod At 42k files and with 170gig space still remaining my ipod has started crashing on shuffle (my prefered use). Am I doomed to not realising my pod’s full potential? Do I have to remove music until it is happy or will RockBox get aroumnd this issue? I know the ipods firmware has a cap of 50k files but at 42k I am some way off that.
Many thanks
@Edcruwys – Which iPod model do you have? If it is an Video model (5g/5.5g) they can only handle playlists which are below ~32K, anything larger can crash them. This does not mean your are at the library limits if the iPod is otherwise working ok.
Hi
Thanks for responding. My pod is a 7th gen (was a 160gig).
I did a lot of research on these forums and elsewhere before upgrading and I should be able to max at 50k files on this unit. To be fair I woild only install a 256gig if I had to do this all again.
Since my question I have removed a bunch of videos, so of which were 250gig or thereabouts in size and I have killed ane playlist which was holding about 1700 mixed reggae tunes and I may have resolved it but need to work with it a bit longer to see how long it lasts. I think limiting any playlist to around 50 – 60 songs seems to be the way forward. I have 3 classic ipods and an iphone but none of the others are anywhere near this beast for storage. I’ll keep you posted.
Hi, so I managed to get my iPod into the “Low Battery Sad Face” state and I’ve read that I’m supposed to put the mSata into a Sata enclosure to get it out of the Low Power mode but I have some questions regarding that. First of all which enclosure should I be using? I only have an HP 15 laptop so I was wondering if I had to take it apart and connect the enclosure internally or if I could use an outside connection like USB.
My second question is what should I do with the mSata once I have it in the Sata enclosure and connected to the laptop?
Thanks for your amazing product!
Do you have to format the Msata drive before installing it into the Ipod? I am using a Samsung PM851 – 512Gb Msata drive and it gives me the “Use Itunes To Restore” Screen. I plug into my computer and Itunes and my computer don’t recognize it at all. The Ipod says “OK To Disconnect” when plugged in. I normally use the Iflash SD Card one and that one is just plug and play. Do I have to do anything to get it to recognize?
@Ryan – If the mSata drive has been used before, it might require formatting – with your issue, check the battery is fully charged and check your HDD ribbon. There could be an issue with the iPod communicating with the drive.
Thank you Tarkan, installing the mSata drive with a Sata-mSata adapter did the trick, the partition table was a mess: it had 4 primary partitions, one logical partition and a bunch of unallocated space between them, the result of all my attempts with the USB enclosure, I suppose. Now I know the reason of the sad iPod face. With GParted I deleted all these partitions, created a single primary FAT32 partition and now I’m ready to transfer all my music.
Just a couple of questions: I’m afraid that when I received the iFlash-Sata two years ago the thermal gap filler was missing, can you tell me where I can get a similar material?
And as for the battery, I’m still using the original one that came with the iPod so it’s almost ten years old. I’m trying to find a good replacement but all my searches result in 800 or 900 mAh batteries which are unsatisfactory. Can you tell me where I can get much more powerful batteries?
Thanks again for your support
Andrea
Hi Tarkan,
I’ve been using for a couple of years your iFlash-Sata adapter along with a Samsung EVO840 500GB msata drive in my 5.5 iPod video without any issues. Unfortunately, recently while listening to music and thinking that the battery was recharging (but it wasn’t) I completely drained it and so I came across the sad iPod face issue without any solutions.
I installed the original HD and completely recharged the battery, but after reinstalling the msata drive, I cannot enter disk mode, nor DFU mode. The drive works flawlessly in an USB enclosure, I completely erased the partitions with AOMEI, recreated MBR, created the FAT32 partition, but nothing: the sad iPod face keeps showing up.
I even tried without partitioning and formatting, even formatting with HFS+ without succeeding.
The drive operates well in the USB enclosure but not inside the iPod, and the original drive works well too.
I tried all the suggestions found here and on the web but unsuccessfully.
What else could I try to fix this issue which is driving me crazy?
I’m considering to order the iFlash-Quad with quality SD cards, but I’m a little bit reluctant since I’m not sure that it would work.
Thank you in advance
Andrea
@Andrea – USB Enclosures cannot clear the Power Loss Mode, in fact they will constantly put the mSata in to that mode – the best and easiest solution is an mSata – Sata enclosure.
Whats the best battery for the 5th gen 30gb ???? at the moment I have a new 650mAh but it lasts 20-30 mins , might be fauklty one though
anyone else experienced this ?
Mikey
sorry I meant MX200
Hi
love the conversion all worked perfectly , however is there a reason the crucial cx500 shows up as only 465GB ? surely the OS isnt that big as its only a 30gb ipod 5th gen
I followed this guide for the original format
https://www.iflash.xyz/prepare-sdxc-exfat-for-use-with-the-ipod/
thanks
Mikey
Hello,
Any comments on this?
Hi Tarkan,
I have 3 Ipod with iFlash-mSata adapter + mSata cards :
. Crucial M500 480gb
. Crucial MX200 500GB
. Samsung EVO840 1Tb
All Ipods have a 1900mAH big battery
I noticed something strange.
When Ipods are not fully charged, and even when they are fully charged sometimes, if I dock the Ipods on a dock (Pure i-20), there are random pauses or skips when playing tracks while charging the Ipod.
It seems the Ipod can’t play through dock and charge at the same time without having some problems.
Did someone ever notice that?
Thank you,
Max
@Max – I already responded about this sometime ago – It is probably an interaction due to the USB port being used to output data (USB data) and the charge current for the large battery plus the power draw from the mSata. The 7g can glitchy when outputting USB data and power surges.
To isolate this – does this happen when using a standard USB charger (not a USB Apple accessory device), and does it do it with the standard battery installed.
Hi Tarkan,
I have 3 Ipod with iFlash-mSata adapter + mSata cards :
. Crucial M500 480gb
. Crucial MX200 500GB
. Samsung EVO840 1Tb
All Ipods have a 1900mAH big battery
I noticed something strange.
When Ipods are not fully charged, and even when they are fully charged sometimes, if I dock the Ipods on a dock (Pure i-20), there are random pauses or skips when playing tracks while charging the Ipod.
It seems the Ipod can’t play through dock and charge at the same time without having some problems.
Did someone ever notice that?
Thank you,
Max
Thank you! It works! No problem! I have: Samsung EVO 850 250 GB, iPod classic 7G (MC293). The player has become smaller weigh.
After a certain amount of swearing it’s all apparently working – 512 GB reporting for duty. Only problem is the library is > 250 GB and lives on a network drive. This could take a while.
Tarkan, I’m having a weird issue with my iFlash-SATA. I have it installed in a 7th Generation 160 GB Classic, with a Samsung EVO850 500 GB drive. I’m still syncing it through itunes. The ipod is showing that it has no music on it, but if I go into settings, it says that I have 167 GB used and 297 GB free. The 167 GB number is the correct size of the itunes database.
Have you heard of this happening? I am not sure if it is an issue with the player or with the SSD. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
I have a 5.5g video and i installed the evo 840 1tb msata drive. I used disk utility to format and then itunes and its saying the drive has only 32gb of storage. I know there are more formatting steps required and I would appreciate if anyone could help me out. THANKS!