Considering buying 128GB PATA SSD for 12" PowerBook G4

also i've read the original specs on the laptop which states it gets 5 hour battery life, any way to restore the battery life back to the supposed 5 hours??

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momentus-7200RPM-Hybrid-ST95005620AS-Bare/dp/B003N SBF32

hmm i think this drive is the way to go

...any way to restore the battery life back to the supposed 5 hours??

No. It probably never got five hours in real life, and if it has an old battery, that battery will never be new again. If you buy a new battery for it and can get 3-4 hours of running time in ordinary everyday usage, be happy. But don't buy the cheapo batteries you'll find advertised on Ebay for half of what a good one costs — most of those are worthless junk.

I'm afraid not — that's a SATA drive, and you need a PATA (also called ATA or IDE) drive for your Powerbook. No Powerbook can use a SATA drive internally.

Unfortunately not, since the G4 Powerbook do not have SATA controllers but PATA only. The drive you're referring to is a SATA drive.

Oops...somebody aleady commented on that. Sry.
BTW, Buffalo introduced some new PATA SSDs this year, but all my reasearch showed that it is sold in Japan only 😟

Other World Computing (OWC) has some new IDE/ATA drives what will work in the 12" PowerBook.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/MercuryLegacyPro

If you are interested in using SSD in a PowerBook I would look into the article about how to "Reduce SSD Wear by Using a RAM Disk for Your Browser Cache"
http://lowendmac.com/bookrev/11br/0107.html

Hope this helps. I would love to upgrade the system disk to a SSD in my PowerBook but the cost is a little too much at this time.

About the Powerbook *with a newly installed SSD* crashing/hanging/blank screen/frozen beach ball... after waking from sleep see these links:

http://poller.se/2010/08/optimizing-mac-os-x-for-ssd-drives/

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1041834

Some of the hints may help you. I'm using a Kingspec 64GB model (KSD-PA25.1-064MS) on a PB G4 12", and it consistenly freezes upon wake up. Setting hibernatemode to 0 (see links above) did not help, neither did unchecking disk sleep in Power saver options. Will wait for response from Kingspec, else I'll use a conventional HDD instead...

good luck,
Blazzr

UPDATE, I just found a possible solution for PB4 not waking up from sleep using a SSD:

The solution was posted in the user comments by Jordan: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208431

"
NEEDS A LITTLE MODIFICATION FOR USE IN POWERBOOK 12" otherwise the HDD will not wake up from sleep.
- None so far!

Other Thoughts: First of all, I bought 128GB version and experienced the same symptoms as Snakedoc initially. ("stall and sometimes freeze when I woke my powerbook g4 up from sleep mode...and from time to time I would have to force a restart by holding down the power button")

Before I did anything - I found another review - stated that all you have to do is to make sure the HDD.. oops SSD's jumper setting is "Master."

To achieve this with Powerbook 12", I did have to use the default jumper pin that came with the drive and to do that I needed to take away a piece from the 44 pin connector so that it could accomodate the jumper pin. I used my trusty Moto-tool.

After changing the SSD jumper setting to "Master," everything is working great! Everything is really fast, stable and efficient.

I will recommend this drive if you know the difference between Slave and Master, and not scared to do a little (3 min.) operation on the connector. 🙂
"

For those of you still contemplating adding an SSD to your Powerbooks after looking through a few threads and being dissatistied with the IDE SSD options out there on both the price and performance front. I did a whole lot of searching around and eventualy decided to go for the following solution:

Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB 1.8" Micro-SATA version
IDE 44 Pin to 1.8" Micro SATA Adapter http://microsatacables.com/catalog/i196.html

The adapter and 1.8" SSD drive combine into a smaller package than a 2.5" IDE drive so no problems fitting it into the Powerbook.

Installed OS X 10.5.8 running very nicely now faster than with 10.2.8 which I upgraded it from. I also upgraded the Combo drive with a new slot loading DVD drive supporting all the latest options bar Blue-ray

Hmmm. Sounds very tempting! Any issues? Can you post any instructions or tricks/problems to doing it? I'd love to see my old 12 have a little bit more life and this post may have just put me over the top to doing it. 🙂

Hi,

Will this adapter work in a 17 inch PowerBook M9970/A version? Mine has the DDR2 memory.

This would be nice as I can dump the PATA altogether.

..may be even more so. Snow leopard is tremendous, as is the new BIOS replacement.

Move on. Its about 10x faster.

G

Very interesting. Please keep us updated.
Firmware is very crucial when the OS does not give support to SSD.