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.
All of mine 5, 5.5, and 7G have the white print and work fine with the boards.
@ Tarkan
I know for a fact that not all the ribbon cables are damaged. I have a big pile of them. Anyway neither one of my iPods (the 5g, 6g and 7g) accept the older cables with the adapters I have bought from you. Only the year 2008 ribbon cables work with the adapters. I did have 2 of the cables but one broke internally, and it seems to be hard to get another one.
@Wildman – no idea then. All the iPods I am looking at on my desk right now are using the white printed 2005 821-0386, and they work fine – plus most of the ribbons I sell are the 2005 versions.
I have several 7.5gen sdxc pods now, and have an odd problem with one.
Ones with the pny card are working fine with rockbox, though they had trouble with the OF (possibly something to do with my particular iTunes library). But one with a kingston card is working OK with OF, but I can’t get emcore/rockbox install to work with it. It “loses” the card when I try to install emcore, or (sometimes) as soon as I try to write rockbox to it after installing emcore, essentially it rapidly decides its a device with no storage in it.
Is there any reason why different brands of card would behave differently with regard to rockbox/emcore vs OF? Its almost as if Kingston cards prefer OF while PNY ones prefer rockbox.
Okay I need to know what type of hard drive cables will work with the sd card adapter. I have Tarkan’s sd card adapter, and I am going to run a Sandisk 512gb sd card with it in my iPod 6g 160gb Classic (fat version) I have already ran a 256gb sd card in it, and it ran fine after getting the correct Rockbox progream to run on it. Anyway the only hard drive cable I could get to work was #821-0728 which has 2008 copyright on it.
The reason I am bringing this up is because I recently purchased a hard drive cable from a seller on Ebay, and they sent me a copyright 2005 #821-0386 which will not work in my 6g or 7g 160gb. Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated, and thanks in advance.
@Wildman – I think you are mistaken – I sell both types (2005 821-0386 and the 2008 821-0728) and they work fine in the 7g’s – actually the 7g I used for my photo guides on the products pages (here) has the 2005 821-0386 installed and that has an iFlash-bundle with the Kingston 256Gb card installed.
Maybe you just got damaged or faulty ribbons? which does happen.
@ rubeN
Yeah I noticed, and the hard way.. lol
Anyway the 512gb msata iPod I am selling will have almost 93k songs on it. Mostly full albums of different artists and genres. If interested ask me, or contact me privately. And I will try to tell you an idea of what I have on there.
@Wildman
Yeah those cables on the 2000mah do not like bending, they will crack easy.
Well working on getting my iPod 5.5g 80gb with the Samsung 512gb msata drive on the auction block. So I can get the Sandisk class 10 512gb memory card and install it in my 6g 160gb (fat version). Then wait around for somebody to make a stable Emcore and Rockbox program to run on the Classic so I can run the 1tb drive in the future.
Oh and the starting bid on Ebay will be $500.00 U.S. dollars. Just in case anybody would be interested in it. I have to wait for another 2000 mah battery, because my other one cracked the end of the battery cable. So I had to order another one.
Just got my iFlash-Bundle Thin today, installed in a 5,5th 80 GB with a QUMOX 128GB SDXC MEMORY CARD CLASS 10 UHS-I. Easy to install (Open iPod , remove HD, Install iFlash board, close iPod) Works like charm.No issues at all.
@ Tarkan;
Okay that’s cool. That is why I brought it up here, because you know more about them than I would. I appreciate you getting back to me in a timely manner. Have a good one.
Tarkan: i have pics about it (and about the replacing process too 🙂 if you want i can send them to you
Anyway i copied to sdcard 22 gb only yet, but it seems to be works.
Hello Tarkan; I was wondering if this card would work in your adapter and in my iPod. It is much cheaper, and there are more than a handful on Ebay. Here is the link, let me know, and thanks.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/512GB-Micro-SD-Class-10-Cellphone-memory-Card-/321818652696?hash=item4aede2f018
I think I have mentioned many many times before – all them ebay/amazon sold no name / Adata / Samsung SD or MicroSD cards in the following capacities 64Gb/128Gb/256Gb/512Gb/etc are all fake and at best they are reprogrammed 4Gb/8Gb/16Gb cards made to appear as higher capacity. People I have spoken to about this tell me they are generally factory QC failed cards which are bought by secondary sellers who reprogram them.
As of typing the only 512Gb cards in existence are PNY & Sandisk each costs over $400. In the 256Gb you only have cards made by Lexar/PNY/Kingston/Sandisk/Patriot/Sony/Hama/Transcend again all of these start from $100.
Currently the worlds largest MicroSD is a 200Gb card by Sandisk which costs over $200. Several companies make 128Gb MicroSD cards but they are quite expensive compared to standard 128Gb SD cards, so most are around $80.
Everything went fine with an iPod Classic 80gb 6th series and a 128 gb noname sd card. I ve bought the sd card for 12 usd 😀 It can be read 18mb and write 8mb/sec. Good enough for iPod.
Thx Tarkan!
@Saughassy – I would check if that card is really 128Gb, most of them no name cards are normally reprogrammed 4 or 8 Gb cards.
what about that problem with skipping songs after few minutes when iPod sends HDD to sleep but you have 256GB SD?
iFlash is not usable with original Apple software.
Well, i bit the bullet.
I’ve bought:
iPod Classic 7th Generation 160Gb
Sandisk 512Gb SDXC Card
Tarkan iFlash and SD Card Adaptor
I formatted the SD card first by following Tarkans guide, using Aomei Partition Manager to completely delete the MBR and rebuild the formatting. This takes a long time, most of the day in fact. I used a cheap and cheerful compact flash card reader for this.
Then, I dismantled the iPod. Using a iSesamo opening tool that I use normally for my smartphone repairs, I slipped it down into the gap around the chassis, working the blade right to the bottom of each clip (that is the key). I worked around several times around the circumference, gently prying as I went. It does click back as you do this, just persevere.
Disconnect the battery. A lot of people have damaged the connector by trying to pull the tab up. I actually dont do this. Due to the position of it, its seems any attempt to lift the tab puts a prying action on to it and its very easy to tear it off the board! I just pull the flex out without bothering with the tab. It’s safer and the battery flex can also be slipped in gently like this too.
I removed the battery and flex from the back cover by heating the steel on the rear side, and gently pulling them loose.
I replaced the front panel as well, by removing the 6 side screws and gently lifting off the old front, using an air duster to remove screen dust and dirt, alcohol and cotton bud to remove stains, and then replacing with a new front. The dust removal is the hardest part, the canned air you can buy from camera shops is best for this.
Assemble the iFlash, with the SD card adaptor facing towards you. The cable is attached by lifting up the locking bar on the ZIF connector gently, sliding the cable in all the way until the contacts arent visible, then locking the bar down again.
Assemble the headphone jack flex, charge port bezel, and a new battery in to the new back panel.
Attach the headphone flex into its own ZIF connector on the board, and as mentioned above, gently slide the battery flex into the slot, straight down. It should give a little resistance, then go all the way in.
Without sealing it all up, I turned on, followed the message on the screen and used iTunes to format it.
Worth mentioning: on a mac, it asks for my password to start the restore, then gives an error message. DONT WORRY. Just unplug, replug, and repeat the process and it should restore.
Copied 226GB of music on it, took 3 hours.
No problems as yet, not even a crash 🙂
@Neil – great write up, I think you are the 3rd person to report on the Sandisk 512Gb SDXC card. It is still too expensive but hopefully the new 512Gb PNY will change the price situation.
@Tarkan
I’m glad you intro’d the new iFlash-Thin adapter for those who want to use the behemoth 2000mah Chinese battery. Was wondering though, are you later going to sell just the CF-to-SD adapter by itself as opposed to right now being bundled up with the board?
@rubeN – This my first batch of the new adapter so the price is mucher higher, but I hope to have it listed seperately – just not sure of the timeframe yet!
Thanks to everyone who put themselves up for the testing (and who are busy testing!!)
I have one last tester opening for a person who has a 5.5g 80Gb + 7.5g 160Gb (firmware 2.0.4/2.0.5) + a couple of 256Gb SDXC cards (Lexar/PNY/Kingston/Integral).
If you are that person please let me know via my beta test request form.
Hello everyone,
I am looking for a few people who can do some testing. If you are interested please visit the form I have posted, it also lists the requirements of the program: –
http://www.tarkan.info/beta-request
To keep it manageable for me, I only have a very small number of openings for testers. Please no comments or requests posted here about this.
Can I still close the iPod after installing the SD card. It seems to stick out of the housing of the iPod.
@Michiel – Yes of course, the iFlash is designed to fit in the iPods perfectly.
I have undertaken a new project with the iFlash Bundle and I have a question. I am planning on building a 7th gen 256GB iPod completely from aftermarket parts. I have done several refurbish/mod jobs for existing used iPods and have replaced nearly every part, but have never replaced a logic board. I’m wondering how I figure out which 7th gen motherboards actually came from 7th Gen 160s and not from the other 7th gens? Is the difference the firmware version? (Many sellers list the firmware version with the logic board [2.0.4, 2.0.5, etc].) I can’t for the life of me tell the difference between the different logic boards I find for sale. I don’t want to buy one and then hook everything up to find out that the board will only recognize 128GBs of the card (which would completely defeat the purpose of my doing what I’m doing). Tarkan (or anyone else), do you know how I can tell which logic board is which?
@Ryan – There is a difference between the 6g and 7g boards, but there is no difference between the 120Gb – 160Gb 7g/7.5g boards. The only way really is to power up the board and check model number, firmware version. The 7.5g boards have firmware version of 2.0.4 or 2.0.5.
So, anyway…basically nobody knows of a utility or such that would allow one to read and write directly to a drive that’s been formatted in a 5.5/6/7/7.5 generation ipod? Or knows whether such a thing would even be possible?
(Becuase syncing the full 256gb with rockbox took nearly 20 hours!)
I still don’t know why my modded ipods woudn’t sync reliably with original firmware. It might be a problem with my PC, that somehow it can’t cope with anything other than USB/MSC protocol (it seems to have trouble with MTP, and iTunes/OF I gather is akin to MTP rather than MSC mode). but I can’t figure out what it could be. On the other hand, the number of tracks is at about the OF limit any way.
@Pete – On the 6g/7g iPods using EmCore you can ask it to format the data partition, I think that formats the entire drive back to FAT32 which may possible show up on a card reader as a normal Fat32 Partition. Have not tried it myself thou.