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.
@Pete
Oh I though u were using the Apple OS
Oh, of course, it also may be down to rockbox’s USB handler.
Funny thing is, that no longer falls over completely during sync the way it used to when I first started using rockbox – I think some rockbox update or other must have improved that. It will now sync large amounts without failure or disk corruption. So perhaps it just goes slow now instead?
@Pete – sorry did not realise you was using Rockbox – yes that is ultra slow on USB transfers. The transfer rates and times I quoted are using the original Apple OS on the iPod.
@Derek
Everything is between 128 to 320kb/s mp3 and its not supposed to be converting anything while transferring, though I’m new to Media Monkey, not sure quite what work it does during transfer.
Of course, now its essentially done, it doesn’t matter so much, till I next need to do a complete refill for some reason.
Also – again, I am confused by the new format of this site! Is there any way to set it to automatically show comments in the order of newest first, rather than always starting off with ones from several years ago?
@rubeN
Rockbox uses its own database, so that’s not an issue.
@Tarkan
Up till now I’ve had the drive almost full, and used robocopy to just occasionally copy new files/update re-ripped ones. I haven’t noticed the speed because it doesn’t take that long with just a small proportion of tracks changed, wasn’t an issue.
In migrating everything from iTunes to mediamonkey I had to resync the whole lot (as the directory structure had changed) and that really took a long time, more than 12 hours, I think. Also have to use MM rather than just robocopy because the library has now grown so that I have to be selective about what to copy.
I suppose it could be Media Monkey that’s slowing it down somehow, but I’m not sure it was any faster doing a simple robocopy, just that most of the time before it wasn’t copying that much at one go.
Even if you know the format..how are you going to write and edit the iTunes database file? The iPod uses this file to index all the synced songs.
By the way, how do you get this new comment format to display the comments with most recent first, instead of having to page through a couple of years of comments to get to the latest ones?
@rubeN
Honestly, that’s not my experience! Filling a 7G 256gb sdxc, for example, took about 15 hours. (Its not helped when a windows update forces a reboot during the night when you’ve left it to finish unattended!)
When I had 5th gen with ssd, the speed improvement with direct connection vs the ipod firmware was huge, maybe 4-5 times as fast?
Also, its not the weird naming scheme that’s the issue (am using rockbox and don’t use itunes), its the weird low-level format/partition, which is still an issue even with rockbox, for the 5.5gens and above.
Someone must know what that disk format is doing. Though perhaps it is just encrypted and nothing can be done about it.
@Pete – I have a 5.5G with the 256 gb SDXC. Took me 4 days to transfer the library from iTunes, because my CD’s are ripped at Lossless or AIFF, and I’m compressing to 256 kbps for the iPod. Could this be your case too?
@Derek – you have iTunes converting tracks while syncing it will take a long time, depending on the speed of your computer the conversion process can be slow.
@Pete – on a 7g to fill the 256Gb SDXC should not take more than 4 – 5 hours max. Have you got iTunes converting your tracks? if you enable disk use and run a disk benchmark against the iPod the 7g you should get at least 20Mb/s transfer rate.
The 5g/5.5g are much slower probably half the transfer rate of the 7g.
@Pete
The 7G slim syncs music pretty quick. Even the 5, 5.5g does as well, I don’t mind leaving it syncing and lettings it do its thing.
iTunes dumps the music to the iPod using some weird naming scheme, for example FFS10101. Why it does it like that I don’t know.
Does anyone have any information on how the 5.5/6/7/7.5 gens format their drive?
Obviously they use a non-standard drive structure of some kind, unlike the 5th gen. Which is why, unlike for 5th gens, windows can’t access the drive if you connect it to the computer outside the ipod (i.e. in an external enclosure with a sata or usb3 connection).
But is there any way round that? I haven’t tried connecting it with a linux box – does linux have any better luck at reading such disks?
Do any utilities exist that could read and write data on those partitions, or is it encrypted by Apple?
Was just wondering as syncing a full disk gets very time-consuming when you get to 512gb, never mind 1Tb (had to resync a 256gb sdxc and of course it took most of a day – I suspect it would have been much faster if I could have done it via a usb3 sdxc card reader). Obviously an ssd from a rockboxed 5th gen syncs far faster if connected directly to the motherboard – just wish there was a way of achieving that with later ipods.
(This is all taking for granted the use of rockbox, of course)
Anyone know anything about this? Even if its just ‘Apple encrypt it, nothing can be done’.
So it appears that PNY is releasing a 512GB SDXC card, unfortunately it’s around 400 dollars.
Hi Tarkan,
Do you know of any way to effectively reduce the iTunes db?
@beer – the only proven way is to remove or reduce the amount of meta-data, as much as you can live without! – e.g. Comments, Composer, Grouping, Lyrics, Publisher fields, etc.
Hi Tarkan, thanks for the explanation. I am using the iFlash with PNY 256 GB SDXC and have very rare issues with this, so not worth the effort to solve unless there is a way to replace the iPod firmware, but even Rockbox relies on it.
@Tarkan – So are you saying that there is no way to truly correct the issue? For me, it’s not a big problem. It doesn’t happen often. I just thought if there was something I should have done prior to installing I would go back and start over if that meant for sure fixing it. Like I said not a big deal for me though.
Reformatting and restoring may change it for the better as the location/sectors the files are written will change.
But if it is happening rarely, you need to think about how much effort you want to put in to it.
Hello – Like the new site. I was actually trying to find all of the comments regarding this subject. I purchased the bundle for my 5th gen video, everything synced fine. But, I have noticed a few instances on some tracks, skipping and then also a few tracks where it will play for 10 – 15 seconds or so and then change to the next track. I purchased a Sandisk 64gb SDXC Class 10. One thing I didn’t do is follow the formatting instructions for 64gb and higher. Could this be the cause?
Thank you
@Tarkan
I think there is a general problem with iFlash bad song skipping, many ppl have this problem so do I in few 7th gen 160gb iPods with QUMOX 128gb and PNY 256gb. Some songs skip in a chain but the file is ok some play just few first seconds. I use original firmware
@Mike – actually skipping issues are rare.
The skipping you describe is caused by a combination of issues related to the SD card and the Apple OS.
Firstly, SD cards when they are powered on can (rarely, not always) wake in to a bad state or shall we say a busy state. Certain cards like the Kingston 128Gb & Lexar 256Gb, do this more often than others especially when they are filled above 70% compared to when they are empty.
This is why reformatting and having files located elsewhere on the card changes things.
To compound this the Apple OS, if it encounters any issues while reading from the card it will just skip to the next track and keep doing this for many many tracks, until it finally decides there is something wrong, and at that point it finally sends a reset to the storage bus, which will fix the issue and the iPod will resume playing.
I can understand why the Apple engineers have designed it like that for a spinning HDD, but for solid state storage it can introduce these kinds of issues.
Just popping back to mention my 256gb pny sdxc pod has been working well for several months now.
Strange thing is I had to convert it to rockbox as I never managed to get it stable with the original firmware (would go into reboot loop and need to resync, happening more frequently the larger my library got), yet rockboxed it works entirely reliably. Stranger still the same is true of my 240gb hd ipod, which suggests maybe there was just something weird about my iTunes library that the original firmware didn’t like. Decided I much prefer Rockbox anyway, so no big deal.
Anyway, I would recomend your sdxc adaptor combo as being a good upgrade for the classic.
Two things I’m hoping will happen one day though, are (1) that someone can eventually track down a source for a type I CF/SDXC adaptor that works with >128gb, thus allowing a 2000mah battery to be used with sdxc cards, and (2) that 512gb sdxc cards come down more in price (got to happen sooner-or-later, right?)
Hi there- I did get the ipod working with the CF SD adapter and the new ribbon. I had a 256 PNY card running wave files and it would work for a little while and then songs would freeze, skip or play some really harsh scratching/static over the music. Sometimes the device would become unresponsive. I did notice that if I put it on random, the ipod would play many of the wav files but would skip many as well. It would play all mp3s. I have a 5.5 30 gb, which I know has a 32 mb ram so I’m sure if this model is just incapable of playing large lossless files smoothly or if it was the card? I have decided to try another card and also to convert my wav files to ALAC which are a bit smaller yet retain a higher quality.
Do you have any info on the interaction between 32 mb ram, 256 gb cards and poor lossless playback? I want to get this going, because when it worked it was awesome!
Do you know of any way to effectively reduce the iTunes db?
@Tarkan- Yes, I checked and my old hard drive is a Hitachi. So it looks like I will need a new ribbon, and I’m glad this seems like it might be an easy fix.
Any advice on what kind and where to buy the correct ribbon replacement?
Best,
Nathan
@Nathan – I have emailed you a link to an ebay listing in the USA.
Hi Tarkan,
I’ve heard that deleting album art shrinks the itunes database. Have you tried this? Do you know any way to reduce the size of the itunes db? Thanks.
@Beer – I have not tried that, but not sure how much of an impact that would have – the album art is stored outside of the iTunes DB in another cache file or as embedded in the music files. There maybe some saving as the iTunes DB probably stores some metadata related to the album art.
Additionally, when I re-install the old hard drive, the ipod will turn on and read the hard drive.
@Nathan – your ribbon installation does not look right – You need to lift the black bar on the iFlash, insert the ribbon, so that the gold fingers all fully in the connector then push the black bar back down.
Cannot tell from your picture but is your original hard drive an Hitachi model? If so they have a different ribbon.
@Nathan – I just did exactly the same thing this week: Installed a PNY 256gb SDXC card using iFlash in my iPod G5.5. I too encountered the error message of “extremely low battery”. I fiddled with the battery ribbon cable for awhile to no avail, then reinstalled the original 80gb HDD and everything worked perfectly. I concluded the battery and connector are fine, and the error message is a red herring. The real problem was that SDXC card was not properly partitioned and formatted with a FAT32 file system. Here’s what I did to get everything to work: Connect the SDXC card to the computer using a reader verified to work with SDXC cards. Run SDFormatter (available at http://www.sdcard.org) to restore the SDXC card to factory condition. [I did this in Windows 7 Pro x64 using Run As Administrator.] Run AOMEI (also as Administrator) to delete the big exFAT partition (apply), then create a new partition (apply), then format with a FAT32 file system (apply). At this point, eject the SDXC card, replace in the iFlash, and connect to iTunes. That was the magic formula for me. Good luck!