Solid state hard drives

They must be 9.5 mm Parallel ATA. http://www.macsales.com/ has a few.

12.5 mm will work only on 17" model Powerbooks and MacBook Pros, and later AIO MacBook Pros.

Although with the shift to Intel, Apple's notebooks went to Serial ATA, a.k.a. SATA.

As indicated you can check the specs here at OWC and also look into their

installation videos from link in the bottom of the page(s) at macsale...

Their 'Legacy Pro SSD' may be the best option to speed up vintage PPC Mac:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Legacy_Pro

http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

Hi.

When you install an SSD into a PowerBook, it still operates off of the older and slower PATA (IDE) bus.

You do not get huge read/write performance from a hard drive to an SSD and generally speaking, IDE SSD's are hard to come by and are expensive.

Look on YouTube for 'PowerBook G4 SSD Performance' to get read/write performance.

Hope I could help! 🙂

Here's how I did it with my trusty Pismo (PowerBook 2000). I'm really pleased with the benefits. It also has a G4 upgrade; between the G4 (hotter than the stock G3) and upgraded hard drive (hotter than the stock pokey 20GB hard drive), the fan was coming on all the time. Now, the fan is usually quiet, there is no hard drive whine, and it runs more smoothly. Doesn't magically make it screaming fast, but it's noticeably better. And best of all, very affordable.

On Amazon, there is a product described as "mSATA SSD to 44 Pin IDE Adapter as 2.5 Inch IDE HDD 5 Volt" (current price about $12)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009BA8V4M

Then, on eBay, I found a used mSATA SSD. Pismo maxes out at 128GB on its internal IDE bus, so that's what I got precisely. It was described as "Samsung MZ-MPC1280/000 128 GB SSD mSATA 1.8" Solid State Drive." A modern PC needs more storage than 128GB, but it's perfect (and cheap) for my Pismo.

I wrote a customer review for the adapter, on Amazon (August 2015). I'll just include it below, instead of rewriting the details here.

This is an excellent product at a great price. It functions as expected, which is saying a lot when trying to mix old tech with new tech.

I use mine with an old Apple PowerBook (the year 2000 "Pismo" model). It originally came with an IDE/ATA 2.5-inch hard drive. I was already using a 32GB SDXC flash card (with a different adapter) instead of the hard drive. That worked well as a cost-effective replacement for this older type of laptop hard drive, but its performance was not noticeably better (or worse) compared to a mechanical hard drive. The main advantages were (lack of) heat, noise, and weight.

Using an mSATA SSD with this adapter has all of those advantages, AND performance IS noticeably better. Plus overall cost is even lower (per GB); I'm using a previously used 128GB mSATA card (Samsung branded) that I bought on eBay, which appear to be "pulls" from laptops that were upgraded to higher storage. Since my old PowerBook can only recognize up to 128GB internally, it's a "good fit." It cost be just over $40, or about $55 TOTAL cost including this adapter. A high-quality 128GB SDXC card (recently much cheaper) costs significantly more than that (without an adapter). OWC sells a "specialty" SSD with the 2.5-inch drive form-factor that has a built-in IDE/ATA connector (instead of SATA), but it costs more than twice as much for 120GB. Therefore, using an mSATA card (which is designed to be a laptop drive) with this adapter is a bargain.

I took one star off because of a minor design flaw. There is a component on the adapter's board that sticks up too far. When the mSATA card is "folded" down against the adapter's board and secured in place (with two screws), this component interferes, at least in my case (it may not be an issue with other mSATA cards). Fortunately, the difference is about 1mm and there is good contact between mSATA card's connector and the adapter's socket. However, if I did not notice this issue and tried to tighten the two screws completely, I would physically break the mSATA card. My suggestion is to barely screw in the two screws initially. Then, slowly tighten the two screws (alternating) until the mSATA card makes contact with the component on adapter, and stop tightening there. If this issue does not exist for your situation, tighten all the way.

NOTE: mSATA card and adapter only take up a fraction of the space used by a 2.5-inch hard drive. You'll need to devise a way to hold it in place, since the existing mounting method for hard drive is useless. I used a few sheets of foam packing material, cut to appropriate size.

I still use this Mac next to where I sit to watch TV. Works fine for email, and "light" web browsing (thanks to the TenFourFox browser).

I'm interested in using a msata card I have lying around in my g4 1.5ghz, 15" powerbook. Did you encounter any issues with Disk utility or did you do a fresh install straight on to the msata?

No issues, with my older PowerBook. The adapter makes the mSATA card appear to be an IDE/ATA 2.5-inch hard drive to the PowerBook. I was previously using an 32GB SDXC card, with an SD card to 44-pin IDE adapter. I cloned that system to an external FireWire drive (which I continue to use as the backup drive). After making sure the cloned backup was bootable (and then shutting down), I swapped the 32GB SDXC card + adapter with the 128GB mSATA SSD + adapter. I started up from the cloned backup, used Disk Utility to format the mSATA SSD for Mac (use the Partition tab to make sure the Partition Scheme is set to Apple Partition Map). I then "cloned the clone" to the SSD, and it started up with no problem (and noticeably faster).

The maximum size for my PowerBook is 128GB on its internal bus. You should find out the maximum size for your newer PowerBook model.

Thanks for that advice. I was wondering whether, if i inserted the adapter into the internal hard drive connection I could format the card using disk utility and do a clean install of Tiger from the install cds i have? If not, I would try and do a clone of the existing hdd along your line of approach.

There should be no problem with doing a new Tiger installation. To the PowerBook, the SSD is a regular 2.5-inch hard drive. The Tiger installation disc (or disc set) needs to be for PowerPC Mac, not a disc that came with an Intel Mac. And make sure the SSD is formatted properly, to be bootable on PowerPC Mac. If it's not, the installer will not see it as an available target. You can do any required re-formatting using Disk Utility on the installation disc. I used the cloning method because I didn't want to reinstall all of my third-party apps from their discs, and my existing Tiger system was working fine.

That's good to know. The install disks are good for this powerbook. I got it back recently from my daughter after about 5 years and am having some fun with it. For a small outlay it will do for a back up to my 2010 2.4Ghz Macbook. I love to get as much out of these lovely old macs for as long as possible. The powerbook hums along on TIger - not so much so with Leopard which is also installed. After getting a new power adapter for it (lost in the last couple of years) the only negative was the fan running noisily and frequently. I'm hoping the msata card will mean the laptop runs a bit cooler. I intend to get rid of leopard and just run Tiger on the MSata and use it mainly for internet. To my eyes they are beautiful machines and I especially love the feel of the keyboard on the Powerbook.

Thanks again for your help with this little experiment. Fingers crossed!

The information provided from macsales OWC for the Mercury Legacy Pro solid-state drive

product, does cover this question and it is not overly expensive if the user is qualified to

install the hardware correctly and also install a fully new operating system properly.

Up to 41 times the speed of the stock 4500-RPM rotational hard disk drive... is faster.

This helps, too, when considering the read-write uses of the OS X when Virtual Memory

relies on the speeds of data transfer in the system bus to the drive & back, for temp files

and swaps when there is no way to upgrade the physical RAM beyond supported chips.

So to the original post, I suggest this is a good method of upgrade and the product is a

fairly great option compared to a rotational HDD replacement, or other brands of 2.5-inch

SSD products. And I know that if I were to upgrade my mint condition 2005 iBook G4 1.33

12-inch from its original HDD, this would be sufficient to adequately run OS X 10.5.8 there.

Although the unit shipped with 10.4 - and runs Tiger 10.4.11 with better useful purpose than

many later OS X systems (in later intel-based hardware) - Leopard 10.5.8 lags & is much

slower even though my iBook G4 has 1.5GB of correct guaranteed RAM installed. That is

because the original rotational hard disk drive is 4500-RPM. Hard to find energy efficient

7200-RPM in the (P)ATA vintage drive. That speed helps, especially with VM swap files.

In any event...

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

I'm still awaiting a mSATA to IDE adapter Kenichi linked to in earlier post. They seem to have come down in price and I managed to get one for $5.00.

In the meantime I erases/formatted the mSATA card in a mSATA to SATA adapter I had. Attached it to a usb cable and with my macbook running el capitan attached a second external drive (containing a clean copy of Tiger on it). Using Superduper, I cloned Tiger from the external drive onto the mSATA and its now ready to go into the Powerbook, when the adapter arrives.

Any ideas on whether a couple of small pieces of double sided velcro would do the job holding the adapter in place. I also have a small thin piece of polystyrene board which I could place underneath the adapter. Just don't know if the polystyrene would create heat because of its insulation properties? Any suggestions/comments welcomed.

$5 is quite a deal... 🙂 Be careful with the point I mentioned about a small component on the adapter's board that may (?) interfere with the mSata card being able to "fold down" completely. If I didn't notice, I may have tightened the screen all the way causing something to break.

I used the flat foam packing material that is often used for shipping, cut and folded to appropriate size. The mSATA card plus adapter does not weight very much, so I did not see a need to hold the assembly in place too rigidly. If fact, with the old Pismo design, I can now lift off the keyboard and swap out the storage without any major disassembly. Before, I had to remove a bunch of screws, plus the heat sink, CPU daughter card, and a "cage."

One thing to note, since you did the cloning with a MacBook (Intel). When your format (erase) the mSATA card for use with a PowerBook (PowerPC), it needs to have Partition Scheme set to Apple Partition Map, not the default GUID Partition Map. This is set in Disk Utility (new El Capitan version), when you select the drive (not the volume indented below) in the Disk Utility sidebar, and click Erase.

Thanks again Kenichi. I had a GUID partition when I checked the mSata again. So I did as you explained and found the Apple Partition and erased it again. It took Superduper less than 5 minutes to clone a bootable copy of Tiger. Simple once you are instructed properly.

Thanks again for your assistance and guidance on this. I'm sure it will breathe new life into the PowerBook and hopefully keep it useful for a few more years for less than $50 all up for a 64gb msata and adapter. Given the fall in the Aussie dollar recently, thats a great outcome.