Introduction
For some time many people have wanted to use my iFlash iPod CF adapter with the new generation of large format SD memory cards. SDHC and SDXC are the new generation of SD cards which are cheaper and have capacities of upto 256Gb and growing.
SDXC Installation
Installation
7g and 256Gb PNY
Installation is simple, the iFlash is first installed – then install the SD card in to your SD-CF Adapter – finally insert the whole thing in to the iFlash, ready to restore the iPod.
SDHC and SDXC which cards to get
So far all the SDHC and SDXC cards I tested worked ok, so it is looking likely that majority of the SD cards out there will work ok.
In terms of card speed, one user has reported issues playing FLACS with a Class 4 card. I would suggest you want a minimum of a Class 6 card with Class 10 the prefered option.
So far… working and tested in 5g / 6g / 7g iPods
iPod 5g with 256Gb PNY
The current compatibility list has been moved to the iFlash-Solo product page.
I am quite happy to report that I was able to successfully use one 512 GB Amazon Basics SDXC microSD with the included SD adapter in an iPod 5th Gen. It appears as 500 GB volume with 466.02 GiB total capacity. After restoring it, I get 465.79 GiB. I am quite happy with the purchase. I will mod my 7th Gen when I have the time. I was able to also upgrade the battery on it with a 3000 mAh battery (385872 from AliExpress).
I’m glad that you have made things work. It’s so frustrating when you can’t find out where things have gone wrong. What I can’t understand is why are manufacturers allowed to advertise 512GB memory that they know will only give you 466GB in reality. The ‘lost’ memory goes in controlling the card and the higher the advertised memory the lower the actual memory that you can use. The figure of 466GB sounds about right as a 1TB ssd gave me approx 932GB and you feel robbed and I think that I’ve lost almost as much as a 120GB iPod. Would you but 512 toilet rolls only to find 466 in the packet when you got home? I reckon we are being conned here. Enjoy your increased number of tunes.
Concerning comment 4A when I was confused about losing tracks from iTunes. The problem just kept getting worse and then suddenly my file explorer seemed to lose loads of files. I diagnosed that the 2 year old Seagate hard drive was dying yet because my Dell pc has a 500GB SSD and a Seagate 2TB HDD the pc was operating fairly normally. I spoke to Dell who denied all responsibilty even though the HDD was guaranteed for 3 years. I next tried Seagate who kindly accepted the problem ‘may’ have been theirs and sent me a replacement 2TB drive. I also purchased a 4 TB drive to fit in one of the spare slots in the pc so that I can back up on an internal drive as well as an external drive. I have finally got around to trying to download from my iPod to an empty iTunes using iMobie ‘Any Trans’ software. I have used this software to copy from one iPod to another and that works great. I have also downloaded an iPod to my PC but it seems to lose some of the album, and artist details whereas when you download an iPod via iPod control you can usually organise the tracks into albums and / or artist. To manage this I usually click on the iPod in Explorer then in the view menu click -show – hidden items – iPod control – music then I use F00 as my master file then open each file in turn and copy and paste each file into F00. It takes a while but all your tracks are then copied to one file that can be manipulated into albums / artists that is your backup or can be copied back into iTunes if the albums get ‘lost’. Sorry if I’m teaching some how to ‘suck eggs’ but it might help others.
Success on 7th Gen 160GB Classic with iFlash quad + 3 cheap and cheerful Amazon Basics SDXC micro-flash cards ( 1×256 & 2x 128) from Amazon warehouse. Used suggestion in blog to use DISKPART to ‘clean’ all 3, installed adapter & cards, add new battery and first time iPod restore now with 450+GB free , extended battery life and lighter to carry!
Thanks for all advice and guides on here
I wanted to report success with the Samsung Pro Endurance 256GB microSDXC UHS-I Card
So the SanDisk Extreme Pro 256GB card is listed as compatible with the iFlash-ATA1.
When I installed it in my iPod Photo, the iPod would not save any settings in Rockbox, nor could it create an index. Tried reformatting, tried FAT32 an exFAT, no luck. A few hours trying reinstalls, different ways of troubleshooting, etc.
Swapped it for a Samsung Evo microSD card in an adapter and I’m now successfully rocking 256GB in my formerly 60GB iPod Photo. Worked with the iPod firmware and Rockbox both, on the first try.
So you might want to add a warning that some users have experienced issues on the SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-1 card listing.
I have occasionally had issues with SanDisk cards and sometimes they are happier if all the cards are the same make and memory. I also rate the Samsung Evo Plus cards as they have always been easy to restore in the iPod and MyMemory’s own cards have been great and have a lifetime guarantee if they cause trouble. I now always buy from MyMemory as I have learned to trust them to sell genuine cards. I have a collection of electronically adjusted cards. Some of the fakes came in packaging that looks exactly the same as from the manufacturers and I have many 512GB micro SDXC cards that under test show 12GB, 28GB and some as high as 56GB. I also have 4 x 1TB cards purchased from Amazon that were so cheap there was no way that they were genuine. They were not. I have been told by eBay and Amazon to keep the fakes as if I returned them they would end up in someone else’s hands and I received refunds for every fake card that I have been sold. I have had some ‘interesting’ rows via eBay messaging with sellers refusing to believe software test results that I send them and have ended up getting eBay to refund me. If you suspect a faulty, not fake, card I find trying each card individually in an iFlash quad adapter and the problem card will not format hence that’s the faulty one to try all the suggested work arounds to sort it out before messaging the seller. Enjoy.
Does anyone know if an SSD is faster than a San disk Extreme Plus Micro SD card upgrade?
I recently purchased a 80GB [THICK] Black Ipod Classic 5.5 that has the search feature and bigger RAM and want to make it really fast.
Currently I have a white Ipod Classic [THIN] with 833GB (1 512GB Sandisk Ultra Plus and 3 128GB Sandisk Ultra Plus cards) but it is the regular Ipod 5 model with lower RAM.
ALSO, does anyone know if a 3000maH battery is safe? I’ve heard it can explode? Which battery would be best for a [THICK] 5.5 ipod?
Yes, 3000mAh batteries are safe. I’ve ordered quite a few from China and they’ve all been fine. The ONLY one which was bad was one that arrived bad because the guy didn’t cover the contact pieces and wrap the battery so that the metal pins made contact to the battery and burned them. Surprisingly, even then… the battery didn’t even puff up.
And after I contacted him and showed pictures, the guy sent me 2 of them which were both fine. All these were bought on eBay also. Never really had an issue with them.
I had mine in an iPod Classic with a thin back and an iFlash Quad board. Never had any issues with it.
Keep in mind that your machine will still run at a relatively slow speed because it’s still a USB 2 connection and transfer speeds aren’t meant to be quick. I’d go the iFlash route mostly for easy expandability and because it’s very power efficient. Really efficient. You could charge it once and not charge it until next month. Even listening 8 hours per day.
When upgrading Sd cards using an iFlash solo, am i able to clone the previous sd card to the new one ?
Hello do youy know where to find tghe electronic board for old Ipod 4th and 5th generation ?
Peter (re: 4/1/2020 10:06pm comment):
Hold down shift when running iTunes. From there, you can redirect the library to a new location (put that on your 2TB drive). You can then go into settings and change the library path to that drive also. 🙂
My iTunes library is on my local NAS which is drive X: 🙂 Runs without incident as long as I have the NAS authenticated… but otherwise no issues.
Lauren, I have used the library location game on many occasions but unfortunately when my old Seagate drive was in it’s death throws it was losing tracks and albums to the extent that I would try to play a track in iTunes and the cannot locate track menu came up and although I had back-ups these were being affected as well. I have now basically got to go through all my cd’s and download them again but that’s not all. I have first got to reinstall windows 11 with all the ramifications that such a move will throw up. The PC has decided that all of my memory sticks are write protected and therefore not useable yet I can download to and from a SDXC memory card so there is hopefully ‘only’ a software issue. All scans by Dell software, Bitdefender and CCleaner all say that there is no issues with the PC. 2 days ago I was raided by what was aledged to be Norton and McAfee anti virus software telling me that I was being attacked which I could only stop by going into Chrome settings and clearing my cookies and browsing history and that got past Bitdefender somehow and didn’t show up in a scan? I really don’t know what to trust to back everything up as I have three external backups and the original duff HDD which is now replaced but the pc issues seemed to carry over to all my back ups. I’ll have to get a 2TB SSD for my iTunes and disconnect it after each use. I’m beginning to really dislike technology. Thanks for the suggestion which I will try out to see if my pc will drop it’s AI tendencies and leave what I have done alone.
Peter, did your PC recognize the iPod? I am running W10. My iPod is 4th Gen. This is my first iflash card (got a Solo) so I was excited to get it going. My roadblock was that my PC wouldn’t recognize it. It saw it, but it didn’t know what it was. I tried using iTunes and iPod updater and neither saw it. So, I went to Win troubleshooter. From there, select View All. From there, select Hardware and Device options and then run the Hardware troubleshooter. It will show the the device that’s the issue in a pop-up and after running the troubleshooter, it will want a restart. It will then recognize the iPod and you should be good to go.
To the iflash crew, THANKS GUYS!!! I found the iPod after tears of thinking it was lost. My son told me about you guys so I came and checked it out. The installation of the ribbon adapter and the card were a breeze. After I got the iPod recognized, I could not get iTunes to perform a recovery. I got upset for a minute but decided to re-open the iPod to see if I missed something. It has been so long since i have used a card adapter that I notice I had not locked the microSD into the card adapter. Put it all together and it was a snap!
I used on the SOlO card a SanDisk Extreme A2 (160MB/s). It was only a 64G card. Will have to get a bigger card now.
Thanks again iflash!
One of the work arounds that I have found to work after working through all the usual suggestions is back to the old turn it off then back on again, but this time with the Apple mobile device services. I’m on win 11 but this will work on 10 as well. It goes like this: Close iTunes down – disconnect iPod from computer – click on WIn button and R to get the RUN command – enter – services.msc and click OK – this opens windows services – Right click – Apple Mobile Device Services and select – Properties – services appear on right alphabetically – Select the dropdown menu next to – Startup Type – choose Automatic – located halfway down the General tab – Click Stop – button is below the dropdown menu – after a moment the Service Status will display – Stopped – now click – start- on the left of the stop button – service status displays – running – click OK to save settings and close the window – Restart computer to in-bed the changes.
Reconnect your iPod and if not set to automatically open iTunes open iTunes and your Ipod should show up on your iTunes. This works for me but like many things you may have to repeat the on / off Apple Mobile Device Services if you have the connection issue again. Good Luck.
HI,
Just wanted to let everybody know I did a successful mod of a 7th gen (bought with a red cross issue).
Used a iFlash-SOLO and a Sandisk 256GN Ultra (UHS-I, A1, gray/red). I used a single foam pad, placed on the SDcard/slot (included).
After install I saw the “restore from iTunes”, as I did. After that I filled it with 200+GB without a hitch.
No additional actions needed and all is fine
My experiences;
Take your time opening the casing. The front is held with metal clips applying presure between the backcase and front. Al in all it took me arond 5-10 minutes to open the casing. Take is small steps at a time (<1 mm) and go around until you can open the casing and disconnect the battery ribboncable.
I used metal spudgers, (three) and plastic prying tools (the sharpest possible, I used the cheap AliExpress ones, that plastic is so soft it can't damage the casing of the iPod.) to create a small gap between the front and back. Once there was a gap, I placed the metal spudge and let it stay there. No need for any other tools for my experience…
I restored from a 2019MBP, I needed to connect to a usb-c port, the restore failed when I connected it to a USB2 hub/port in my monitor (which was also connected to another USB2 hub)
Love how light it feels now.
Can I pose a new strand to these comments please. I recently had to replace my main PC and now have another Dell with 16 GB ram and a 9th gen iCore 7 processor. I expected high speed downloading to my iPods. However, the PC has a 2 TB hard drive and a 500 GB SSD ‘C’ drive and I cannot get iTunes to work correctly. I cannot use the 500 GB SSD for iTunes inc music library as I have 1.4 TB of music on my iTunes so I use the SSD to run iTunes using remote storage for all my music. I have tried using the 2 TB internal drive as the storage drive for iTunes but ended up using a 3TB LaCie remote drive as the iTunes storage drive. My problem is that I cannot get iTunes to restore any iPods at all including those that I have modified even though I have been able to restore them on my laptop and the PC does sometimes recognise and sync previously synced iPods. Has anyone come across this issue before and found a way around it? I currently have plenty of time to mess about with things like this!! I have also been having slow running issues and internet drop outs on the PC and wondered if this might be part of the problem. I am hoping to run a network cable upstairs to the PC to see if I can get it running normally.