Msata SSD in powerbook g3

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Msata SSD in powerbook g3

i just thought id let everyone know about this working combination of drive adapter and msata ssd that works mint in my wallstreet. i had to wait almost a month for the adapter but for the price i didnt mind.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/400754841462?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

http://www.ebay.com/itm/321548245373?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

i figured i wouldnt need more than 24gb for os8.6 it was recognized as soon as i booted with an os9 cd to partition and format. the adatper and msata is about half the size of a 2.5" ide drive, i secured it from moving around with velcro inside the original caddy.

the biggest reason im posting this is because i know that these laptop IDE drives are getting old (and slow!), and the book itself can be picky about replacements. this cut the boot time down by over half too.

hope you all find this useful! im sure it would work in other 'books too!

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Re: Msata SSD in powerbook g3

Thanks, that looks like what I have been looking for.

Older discussion here...

http://www.applefritter.com/content/are-newer-pata-drives-backward-compatible-older-pata-interfaces

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Re: Msata SSD in powerbook g3

What's the performance like with that setup? I've been thinking about replacing the hard drives in my PB 1400 and 2400's with CompactFlash cards and adapters.

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Re: Msata SSD in powerbook g3

i havent run any real benchmarks but it feels a lot faster, installs OS from other hard drives a lot faster, like 6 minutes for 8.6. booting os 8.1 is probably as fast as it gets. i always wanted to try the CF card route but if it didnt work out, i wouldnt have a use for the CF card. i can always use msata in a newer machine if i needed to.

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Re: Msata SSD in powerbook g3

oh and because the fan doesnt work in my machine, its eerily quiet! unless theres a cdrom spinning it doesnt make sound

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Re: Msata SSD in powerbook g3

I'm now looking to do this with a couple of G4 PowerBook 17s. Research is telling me that they can handle an internal drive size of 320GB. So now I'm shopping around for the MSATA drive portion, and I want a reliable lasting brand. I trust SanDisk (very expensive), Samsung, and Intel. If I understand correctly, these brands care very much about the reliability and quality control of their ICs. I want advice on where to get these drives in the larger size, in the 200-320GB range, for as reasonable prices as possible. Due to the slightly more limited "write cycles" of flash memory, I want to get these new.

Mutant Pie

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Re: Msata SSD in powerbook g3

Well, I had a 64 gig msata drive left over from an upgrade to another computer. I ordered a msata to ide converter which arrived this morning. Formatted the drive into 2 partitions and began installing OS 9.2 and OS 10.4. OS 9 went badly, so I cheated and copied an install from my VST expansion bay hard drive. That worked - the computer booted flawlessly and I was able to run programs in the old operating system.
From there, I attempted to install Tiger from CD's using XPostFacto.
OMG - now watching the slowest install ever. I thought that the computer had frozen, restarted it and tried again only to get the same result. I left it running on the chance that it might be sluggish and then suddenly surprise me. Amazingly, it is working but it may be a couple of days to complete the process. One hour into the install and it's at a blazing 6% completed. I have a feeling it might take a couple of days to do this if this pace keeps up (and it doesn't hang).

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Re: Msata SSD in powerbook g3

The installation tanked on the swap for the second CD. I gave up on the CD installation and swapped out the CD drive for a DVD drive for another crack at the Tiger install. It is almost as painfully slow, but I will hopefully avoid the hang up of reboot because there will be no swapping of CD's 1-4 for the installation. At this rate, it will be done installing late tomorrow. Sooooo slooooowww.

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Re: Msata SSD in powerbook g3

I too had a similar experience using an MSATA adapter in a Wallstreet. I tried it with a 32GB leftover Dell MSATA SSD. It worked fine for installing Mac OS 9 from the CD drive, but the system would hang doing large file transfers. I also cloned OS X 10.4.11 to the drive and tried to use that with XPF. The system would boot, but was ridiculously slow and unusable.

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Re: Msata SSD in powerbook g3

i never had any slow downs with mine but since then i have swapped the same drive into my Tibook and aside from difficulties getting 9.2.2 installed, i have osx as well and they were both working fine until i caused a hangup from plugging in a defunct firewire drive. now it just hangs on boot up of tiger. havent tried to change startup drives with a boot cd yet though. was working great for a while.

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