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.
@ Jon M Curley
What type of ipod are you using? I’ve been trying in vain to get any one of 3 7.5gb ipods to work with that card – they just keep corrupting themselves. Are you using a 5.5g?
Tarkan I have had no issues running your CF-SDXC adapter with the 256GB PNY SDXC for the last week. 15,400+ songs ~180GB memory used.
works again, I did hard reset.
i have a 7th gen classic 160gb with iFlash CF+SD/CF adapter and 128gb SDXC and have strange problem,
the music stops playing wenn the display turns off, then wehen I press the click wheel then plays again, ist like goes to stand by, battery is charged and OK.
Any idea whats wrong?
my sdxc pod just doesn’t work!
Its set up, formatted fat32 with aomei. I sync a full 240gb or so to it (takes 4-5hours) eject it.
(I have found that any attempt to interrupt the sync to break it into shorter batches will cause iTunes to fall over, requiring it to be restarted, and then a wait while it checks library and verifies ipod)
Sometimes it corrupts instantly upon being ejected, more often it seems to be successful at this point.
I play some tracks over a day or so.
Sometimes I then notice corrupted or swapped-round art-work (though artwork sometimes gets confused even on my hd ipod, the firmware seems to struggle with that in general).
But even if I don’t, every single time I then connect the pod to the PC again, windows will pause, then claim the disk is unformatted. Then the ipod will behave as if its completely corrupt, and will ask to be restored.
I can still connect in disk mode and see everything (all the content) is still there, but I can’t connect in ipod mode and can’t use the ipod any more, and have to restore and resync it.
The same thing happens if I do a forced ‘select-menu’ reboot of the ipod.
It will only ever work for a period, after being loaded up the first time, but any attempt to sync again or to reboot the device and it goes back to the apple icon reboot loop. I can’t figure out what is going on. The battery is fully charged, but its as if either upon ejection or upon connection to the PC the ipod suffers some corruption that means it can no longer be recognised by the PC unless its in disk mode.
I’m not having much luck with either the sdxc pod or the ssd one (the latter tends to corrupt itself when syncing – you wait 5 hours for it to finish, then it goes to the red-cross when you eject – I’m increasingly thinking its due to heat).
The only thing I can think of to try is to put the sdxc or ssd adaptor in another 7.5gen ipod, just in case its a fault with the logic board of these. Unfortunately I don’t have a 5.5 gen to try.
@Pete – Very strange problem you have there.
What SDXC card are you using?
What size is your iTunes library, no. of tracks?
If you get the iPod in to diskmode and connect to your computer, close iTunes, run something like H2Testw to test that write and reads from the iPod drive are ok. Also what kind of transfer speeds are you getting? H2Testw will show this while it is testing the drive.
Hi Tarkan,
I’m looking in to buying your iFlash CF+SD/CF adapter to use with a 265gb PNY SDXC. I have a 7 Gen 160Gb iPod classic, model MC297LL. I have two questions;
I have read somewhere in these posts about the ipod battery draining during initial synching after the new hardware is installed, does the addition of the flash adapter prevent charging when synching (using USB to PC)?
Also, I currently use an Onkyo digital transport as a docking/synching port. It extracts the digital signal from the ipod and sends it to an external DAC for processing and sending to my amp. Can I still synch and play my ipod in this way if I get a CF Adapter?
Thanks,
Chris
@Chris – No, the battery issues during syncing only apply to people running my mSata board. Your iPod will work exactly the same as it does now, there will be no difference – so everything you did with it before the SDXC upgrade will still work after.
Well I woke up this morning and my Mini was still playing. Just turned off a minute ago. I got 21 hours and 2 minutes of continuous play with the stock battery.
@ Jon M Curley, that’s crazy! I was never being able to get more then eight hours on any of my 1st and 2nd gen Minis. I used third party batteries though, never new ones.
Correction, I mean “Never stock ones”
Just letting you all know that the PNY 256gb sd card is at 89.99dollars at the moment! really cheap, no? 🙂
@CMarti I have been updating on the SSD thread on Head-Fi as I can post pics there.
Thanks Jon M Curley, I will check the Head-Fi post now.
Listening to my Mini right now. The only issue I saw was that it took ~3.5 hours to sync my 8628 songs. They are encoded at 320kbps.
I am currently syncing up my 80GB of music to it right now.
Sweet time to put the adapter in my newly refurbished iPod Mini 2G!!!! 256GB MINI!!!
@ Jon M Curley, please let us know how it works. The 2nd gen iPod mini is very picky when it comes to CF cards and SD to CF adapters.
Tarkan, if I purchased the iFlash Bundle (iFlash v3 + SD Adapter v7), am I able to remove the SD Adapter in order to use a CF card?
Yes, of course.
I have a Generation 5.5 30gb ipod I ordered – “iFlash Bundle (iFlash v3 + SD Adapter v7)”. And I am using this SD card.
https://www.pny.com/Elite_Performance_SDXC_Class_10?sku=P-SDX256U1H-GE
When I install this in the iPod I get a sad ipod icon with a triangle with explanation point and “www.apple.com/support/ipod” This iPod was fully functional before removing the hard drive. What am I doing wrong. Do I need to format the SD card differently?
Thanks,
John
@John – Have you installed the iFlash the correct way? The Zif connector goes the opposite way to the original HDD.
No I must have mist that info Thanks
It’d syncing now
Hey Tarken,
When formatting the msata drive using a USB adapter and AOMIE, do you recommend an advanced format? What type? SSD optimized? I have been trying to get my 6th gen to work with rock box and a Samsung 840 1 TB and your board. I’ve tried the emcore 967-968 with your files, but I can’t get your boot loader to work. I do have a working boot loader from emcore. I get emcore to boot, but rock box sometimes fails, then even when it loads it disappears after I reboot the ipod. Any advice? I’ve been working on this for over a week now and could use a tip. Thank you!
@ Scott – I suggest commenting on one of the iFlash-Sata articles, as people on there have installed Rockbox on the 6g and can help with which versions to use, sadly EmCore/Rockbox has many problems with the ATA code, and there are various buildd floating around to make it work.
Hello Tarkan,
first of all thanks for making this little jewel 😉
I bought in late December 2014 the iFlash CF+SD/CF adapter and I’m using it with a 256Gb PNY Elite Performance High Speed SDXC Class 10 UHS-1 card.
The iPod it’s a 160Gb iPod classic, model MC297LL, loaded with about 120Gb of mostly ALAC and 256Kbps AAC files (about 6000 files).
Restoring the iPod and loading songs on it works like a charm, and it’s pretty fast.
I’m getting a strange behavior though. Every now and then the iPod would pause playing, backlight turning on and after 2-3 seconds the iPod would resume playing from about the same spot.
It’s not skipping and it’s not freezing/blocking. Just pausing and resuming. I’m not sure if that happens only on lossless files and it’s pretty random and not very frequent.
First time I formatted the card using the standard DiskUtility on a Mac. After experiencing this issue I reformatted on a PC using AOMEI and following your instructions, but the issue is still there.
What do you think?
Cheers,
Claudio
What kind of bitrate and file size is the files it does it on? It could be related to the time the iPod is taking to read in the file.
You get something like this on the original HDD with very large high bitrate M4A files, it is probably something similiar – having said that I have a test 7g with the 256Gb PNY installed and that has many albums with 40Mb+ sized high bitrate M4A files and I have never heard it do that.
Hello, has anybody tested this card with a 30g 5.5g ipod video?
http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Speed-UHS-3-Memory-TS128GSDU3/dp/B00J3KA8JG/ref=sr_1_4_m?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1405991514&sr=1-4&keywords=sdxc+transcend
Hi I am using the mSata adapter with iPod classic 7th Gen (160Gb stock) and a Samsung 840EVO 1TB mSata drive(MZMTE1T0HMJH). When I first installed it, I restored with iTunes and success! Except that iTunes only allows 120GB… so that didn’t suit me. I followed the threads and read that using emcore and rockbox is the only option to access the full 1TB with my model. So I did that. With the adapter and mSata drive, I constantly get an ATA: Error 80000000 while reading BBT (sector 0, count 1). I can get to the emcore boot menu, but I cannot load rockbox. Here’s what I’ve done so far:
-Attempted installer-ipodclassic-r859-20120102.ubi
-Attempted installer-ipodclassic-r708-20110424.ubi
-Attempted installer-ipodclassic-usbfixcandidate.ubi
The iPod will say formatting, but goes no where.
I also put my original iPod HDD back in, and I was successfully able to load rockbox onto that. So the iPod hardware is working properly, I just can’t get it to go with this iFlash adapter.
I do have a mSata to Sata adapter, and a USB to Sata adapter, so I have also tried to copy the contents of the working iPod HDD to the mSata drive via usb. I cannot copy disk with a utility, since one shows as 512 bytes per sector and one shows as 4096 bytes per sector. I have copied simply by dragging and dropping the contents of the iPod HDD with Rockbox to the mSata drive. Still no luck.
Any suggestions? I’d really like to get this thing running 100%
Tarkan I am purchasing the 512GB Sandisk SDXC to test with the 5.5G 80GB and the 7.5G 160GB thin.
Going where no (wo)man has gone before. Keep me posted.
@JJ/ Once you get Rockbox successfully on your iPod, just create a folder to put your music in. You will hit a wall for a file limit. When that happens, just make another folder to put your music on, then update your database on Rockbox. I can help and guide you step by step when you get your card and adapter loaded and with Rockbox on it. As I have over 380gb, with over 92,000 songs on my masata 512gb 5.5g 80gb iPod Good luck.
Thanks for the response! I’m about to purchase the bundle tonight!
So I should install rockbox before I do anything? I thought I read that transferring the music with rockbox installed is problematic? But maybe I’m mistaken.