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Jul 1, 2012 9:27 AM in response to Marius1976by geishaslave,PATA SSD in Powerbook G4 PPC, Mac OS X 10.5.8.Howdy folks and thanks for reading. Just wanted to post a summary of my successful mission to install an SSD in my ancient Apple Macintosh Powerbook G4.
- Apple Macintosh Powerbook G4 15 inch, 1.25 GHz PPC, 2GB RAM, Panasonic UJ-85JS as superdrive upgrade, aluminum case.
- Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard.
I chose the Transcend model TS128GPSD320 128GB PATA 2.5 inch SSD. Another one I looked at was the Kingspec 128GB PATA. I went with the Transcend because of price and availability.
First I backed up the existing hard drive as a .dmg using Disk Utility. Free alternatives are CC CLoner and SuperDuper. Commercial variants include Clone X, Data Rescue, and CopyCat.
Next I attached the Transcend SSD via USB using one of those external adapters that let you plug in 5.25/3.5/2.5/PATA/SATA drives.
I performed a format as HFS, Journaling, APM, zero all sectors. Yup I know that it is not advised to perform a low level format of an SSD, but I came across some posts about 'seasoning' an SSD for use. An SSD can take thousands of write cycles and so I figured by doing a zero all sectors, any bad blocks will be caught and spared out right away.
Next I cloned the existing hard drive to the SSD using Disk Utility.
Installation was smooth as the Transcend had the exact same dimensions as the existing 80GB Toshiba IDE electromechanical HDD. One difference was the Transcend needed a jumper to be set as master while most regular 2.5" drives have no jumper present for master disk mode. I did see a post from someone who had problems with their SSD until they put the jumper back on as master (or CS). The SSD seemed weird because it is this plain, smooth box that weighs a fraction of a HDD and so it seemed, well, flimsy. Also, there were absolutely no sounds and no heat could be felt during the formatting and cloning operations.
After the backup, format, clone and swap were done, the Powerbook booted up with no problems. I immediately turned off system sleep. Sleep would cause everything in memory to be written to the SSD then deleted upon exiting sleep. Unnecessary write cycles, right? Again, I had seen posts from others who had performance issues with their SSD with sleep enabled.
I had done lots of research about SSD before hand. My issues were: a) Was it worth the expense to put such a nice drive in an old PPC machine? b) The performance degradation issue over time. c) Reliability.
I used the Aja utility to measure read and write speeds. The original 4200 RPM hard drive averaged about 50MB/sec read, 30MB/sec write. The Transcend SSD averaged about 70MB/sec read, 50MB/sec write probably because of no latency and a much faster controller interface. So I am getting full performance from the system IDE bus. In fact, that is a bottleneck since the TS128GPSD320 is capable of the latest ATA standard.
I did not experience a faster boot up. I tried setting the SSD as the boot drive in Startup Disk, but it made no improvement. No difference in shutdown time either. There was vast improvement in the time to launch applications, however. I am using MS Office 2008 and there was a major speed up in the time to launch Word.
Leopard does not support the TRIM command. I found a utility that will issue the TRIM command, but requires at least 10.6 Snow Leopard. Mac OS X 10.6 and later do not support PPC :-( I am going to try the erase free space feature of Disk Utility to simulate TRIM once I start getting performance degradation due to low free blocks available.
So in summary, I had a great experience with upgrading to an SSD in my legacy Powerbook G4. The price was high vs. the equivalent capacity IDE electro-mechanical hard disk drive. There are some performance improvements, but not enough to justify the increased cost considering resale value or the cost of a replacement machine. In perspective, I could have had a brand new 7200 RPM 320 GB hard drive for the same price as the 128GB Transcend SSD.
I plan to use my modified Powerbook for quite a few more years, though. It serves my needs well and is better than stock issue because of the superdrive, memory, and SSD upgrades.
I plan to do incremental backups often. One problem with solid state devices like USB flash drives and SSD is the electronics can totally fail preventing DIY recovery. Pro recovery services are enormously expensive because the flash chips have to be de-soldered then mounted on a rescue board, subsequently the files are then reconstructed, etc. and so on. So keep all flash ROMS devices backed up.
Thanks for reading and contact me with questions about further details.
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Jul 12, 2012 9:18 AM in response to geishaslaveby geishaslave,I have obtained some technical information about the Transcend TS128GPSD320 128GB PATA 2.5 Inch SSD. It uses the Silicon Motion SM2236 controller and supports garbage collection with wear leveling. Please visit the product page for more details:
http://www.siliconmotion.com/A3.2_Partnumber_Detail.php?sn=35
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Jul 28, 2012 6:20 PM in response to geishaslaveby TacomaNate24,Hi Geishaslave,
I appreciate your thorough write up above. A few questions directed at you, or anyone really, as I'm about to pick up the Kingspec PATA SSD:
1) Any Trim-similar solution for Leopard 10.5.8?
2) Multi-task bog and startup times, are they a common occurance? Any tips to overcome?
3) Are you still satisfied with your modified G4?
Thanks ahead,
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Jul 28, 2012 8:44 PM in response to TacomaNate24by geishaslave,Thanks.
I could not find any TRIM utils for Leopard, but it is a moot point with PATA SSD. The PATA SSD controller is compliant with CF6, which does not support the TRIM command. Instead garbage collection and wear leveling are the tactical algorithms deployed for speed and endurance. There are at least two TRIM apps for 10.6 and 10.7, however. Actually, I believe Lion supports TRIM for Apple installed SSD, thus the apps serve as enablers for all makes of SSD.
Yes, you could use a SATA SSD through a SATA to PATA adapter then install the .kextfile to enable the TRIM command within 10.5.8. Serial ATA SSD controllers support the TRIM command.
There was no apparent speed up for boot and shutdown lengths, but with Leopard shutdown has always been fast. The recommendation to improve start up speed was to highlight the SSD in the Startup Disk preference pane. I also tried disabling all startup items. Neither worked for me.
I chose Transcend over Kingspec for controller type, price, availability and published performance specs.
I am very satisfied with my modded PB G4. The major issue right now is with Adobe Flash Player. Power PC systems were orphaned beyond version 10.1. Now I am coming across .swf and .flv that won't play in Safari, Firefox, or Camino. Something to do with the version of Flash used to create the source file.
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Jul 29, 2012 2:29 PM in response to geishaslaveby Peter Arnegui,On the TRIM topic I'm not sure the performance impact is really significant. Using a PATA SSD here for some month and nothing noticeable yet.
If you can't use flash, you can also consider using the much fater TenFourFox browser on you g4. It runs great on both 10.4 and 10.5
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Jul 30, 2012 7:39 PM in response to geishaslaveby TacomaNate24,Okay, thanks for all the help guys, really,
Here's is what I have:
An Ibook G3 (my mistake I thought it was G4, but no)
Waiting for Airport card, 16gb Kingspec Pata, 512 MB RAM, replacement feet, to all arrive this week.
Someone sold me their original discs of Tiger OS X 10.4.2 for $5 and, I've already gutted the broken Harddrive from the Ibook.
All that's left is to wait...
Last little outstanding, correct me if I'm wrong, I need to manipulate a bridge over the pins on SSD to make it master. Anyone able to explain specifics on which pin to cover?
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Jul 30, 2012 8:18 PM in response to TacomaNate24by geishaslave,With my Transcend 2.5 inch SSD, it came jumpered as master. I left the jumper on to set it as master. With regular spinning hard drives, jumpers are usually left off. Also, there was no need to modify anything at the mounting point in the drive bay, as I have read in other (gruesome) posts. The drive, with jumper on, fit perfectly and totally onto the pins.
@Peter Arnequi: Thanks for your comment. The TRIM issue doesn't matter with IDE SSD because the controller simply does not recognize the command. I do not think TenFourFox will solve my flash video issues, unless it has integrated support for Flash. The PPC platform cannot install Flash player 11 and so the problem is with proprietary players used at sites like WSJ.com, along with .swf and .flv files that were created for Flash player 11 or later.
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Dec 17, 2012 8:56 AM in response to geishaslaveby Jast_DK,I have an old G4 PowerBook 17", (V5,3)
With my Transcend 2.5 inch SSD 64GB (TS64GPSD320), it also came jumpered as master, and I left the jumper on. However, I experienced trouble installing a clean Tiger and/or Leopard until I found the error I made! Do remember when doing the partion in DiskTool to choose "Options" and Apple Partition Map (for PowerPC - based Macintosh. If you fail to do so Indstall disk will not recognize SSD as a boot disk!
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Dec 19, 2014 8:11 AM in response to MKH01by tmma.a,Hi MKH01,
I am trying to follow your instructions and put an SSD into my beloved Powerbook 12.
Do you confirm it is still working well?
Would you maybe provide also some link for the ssd which seems hard to find (and afraid to pick the wrong one).
Thanks.
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Dec 19, 2014 8:36 AM in response to tmma.aby Allan Jones,Did you notice this thread started four years ago? One of the helpers has since passed away. Please start a new thread--it is the one sure way to get fast help, as many experienced users here avoid old threads that have been reopened.
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Dec 19, 2014 8:40 AM in response to Allan Jonesby tmma.a,Thank you Allan, and yes, a did notice that, but I don't need a new thread, a need that guy advice.
