johnk

Has anyone gotten an SSD to work with the G4?

My current drive is a 250GB SATA Samsung HM250JI. But it seems to be dying (lots of hard drive errors at every bootup), and I want something that will make resumes from hibernate much faster.

So I spent $400 on an Intel X25-M SSD, since I read numerous reviews that the controller used in other SSDs will causes frequent freezes.

The problem is that the G4 BIOS rarely detects the drive. Sometimes it does detect it, and it shows up fine in the BIOS, but then it will not be detected by either Acronis or the XP setup.

One thing that concerns me is that the G4 BIOS just shows Parallel ATA (PATA) instead of Serial ATA. There is no way to connect a PATA drive (other than the thin ribbon cable used for the DVD), but it seems that the SATA connection is there by way of Infill having soldered on a SATA adapter, which may not be fully meeting the SATA specification.

I think that I am about to smash this G4 to pieces. It has wasted so many hours for me.

Any ideas? I was hoping maybe for a BIOS upgrade, but I haven't found one yet. Definitely not on http://www.infill.co.kr/, which doesn't seem to have any mention of their G4 any longer.

(The only thread I saw was http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/mp3c...-harddisk.html, and there it fails on hibernate.)

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johnk

It looks like the Intel X25 just has horrible compatibility. It would have been really nice if any of the many reviews I read before ordering it had mentioned that.

It also is not detected by my main desktop computer (Asus A8N-SLI motherboard), and I've found that other users with that same motherboard have the same problem.

It is detected by my other PC, which has an Intel motherboard.

I just don't understand why the SSD won't even be detected when both my G4 and desktop PC have other SATA drives which work fine. (And the tech "support" at Intel didn't know either.)


I'm ordering a 7200RPM HD to replace my existing corrupted 5400RPM HD, but still I'll be stuck with having to wait 40+ seconds to come out of hibernation each time (can't use standby since the G4 goes completely off overnight so often, even with a new car battery).

enigma9o7

Wondering your initial question, if anyone is using SSD succesfully. My HD crashed and I'm looking for a replacement; I want to avoid this happening again, so if SSD is more reliable, I'll buy it. But don't wanna buy it if there's any chance I'll run into any issues, its $250 for a Patriot 128GB SATA SSD at frys and that's a lot more expensive than regular 2.5" hdd... I wrote mp3store (they dont have phone support anymore) and they said "You could replace that with any laptop hard drive (either disk or ssd)." so I guess they think it'll work.... but I dont really trust whoever wrote me that email cuz s/he also said "The hard drive is either sata or IDE." which is a pretty obvious, I dont think their were any other 160gb drives ever made besides IDE or SATA, it's not like MFM or anything else ever got that big, and since I bought it with the 160gb drive originally, and they installed it, you'd think they'd know which it was (and who made it, which I also asked but they ignored) without telling me to open it up and look... .anyways I'm rambling now...

But the OP question is my question - Anyone gotten an SSD working on the G4?

2k1Toaster

If you havent bought your drives yet, check out the automotive grade Hitachi drives. I dont know if they are "G4 Compatible" but they are just normal drives, but much much much more rugged and have better controllers to limit the head movement. Pricy in terms of Gb/$ but still cheaper than an SSD and better life than a normal HDD.

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enigma9o7

I found this very informative article that is very useful for anyone else considering SSDs:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531

It seems to rate those Intel's X25 as the fastest by a wide margin, but if they're incompatible with G4, that defeats my purpose. There are a couple others besides the Intel that are still as fast (or faster) than hard drives (after initial write) to avoid those freezeups, like OCZ Vertex... unfortunately the one I was considering from Frys isn't one of them, it appears to be based on the worst controller of them all. And that OCZ Vertex is even costlier ($415 for 120GB).

So thanks for the info 2k1Toaster, I'm now going to look into the Hitachi drives you suggested. I just really don't want to have to go thru this again.

csfile

thanks for that article

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