I wonder if anyone makes a reliable adapter for the M.2 SSD's. I have seen M.2 to IDE but who knows if they are worth the money.
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17" PowerBook G4 gets new mSATA3 SSD
- Thread starter eyoungren
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I wonder if anyone makes a reliable adapter for the M.2 SSD's. I have seen M.2 to IDE but who knows if they are worth the money.
Addonics, which is the company that makes the mSATA adapter I reference, makes a M.2 PCIE adapter. You can put two M.2's on it.
Something I intend to try with my Quad at some point.
https://www.addonics.com/products/ad3m2spx4.php
https://www.addonics.com/products/adm2nvmpx4.php
https://www.addonics.com/products/adm2px4.php
Addonics, which is the company that makes the mSATA adapter I reference, makes a M.2 PCIE adapter. You can put two M.2's on it.
Something I intend to try with my Quad at some point.
https://www.addonics.com/products/ad3m2spx4.php
https://www.addonics.com/products/adm2nvmpx4.php
https://www.addonics.com/products/adm2px4.php
But not for a laptop. I know there are some out there, but reliability is always a concern with other products.
What do you do about TRIM on ssds in powerpc macs? I never did bother putting one in any of my machines.
You don’t. It isn’t supported over IDE even if you could somehow retrofit it to PPC era Tiger/Leopard. Just pick a decent drive with its own garbage collection. Don’t overfill your drive and you should be fine.
OP did you ever do any speed tests now that the Time Machine backup has (presumably) finished? I actually just finished a very similar project on my 1.06GHz iBook G4 12" (Vaseky 64GB, very similar in appearance to yours) but despite the very noticeable speed bump, I am not too happy with myself - I ended up with a physical bump/bulge on the left of the trackpad (where the SSD is, really not sure how) and my trackpad is not working. Lol. I do not enjoy these iBooks at all and this was just a rainy day/boredom project.
Seeing this thread is tempting me to find a PBG4 and upgrade it with the drive I threw in this iBook.
Seeing this thread is tempting me to find a PBG4 and upgrade it with the drive I threw in this iBook.
I haven't seen a single mSATA converter that takes up more room with the drive in situ than the mechanical drive it replaced. You must have caught a cable under or over the drive causing the bulge. Best to take the top lid off and check the trackpad cable.
At this time, 5:18am on 2/23/2019 (Wednesday) my Powerbook has apx. 3.0GB left to go in the Time Machine backup.OP did you ever do any speed tests now that the Time Machine backup has (presumably) finished? I actually just finished a very similar project on my 1.06GHz iBook G4 12" (Vaseky 64GB, very similar in appearance to yours) but despite the very noticeable speed bump, I am not too happy with myself - I ended up with a physical bump/bulge on the left of the trackpad (where the SSD is, really not sure how) and my trackpad is not working. Lol. I do not enjoy these iBooks at all and this was just a rainy day/boredom project.
Seeing this thread is tempting me to find a PBG4 and upgrade it with the drive I threw in this iBook.
It's been running since Friday.
I will let you know.
Gotta love Airport Extreme.
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Yeah, this converter was the same size as a regular drive and about half the weight (if that). Fit right it.
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With a 128GB mSATA SSD, how much minimum space should I always ensure is left on the drive (to facilitate GC)?
Oh... !At this time, 5:18am on 5/23/2019 (Wednesday) my Powerbook has apx. 3.0GB left to go in the Time Machine backup.
It's been running since Friday.
I will let you know.
Gotta love Airport Extreme.
(Time was one of the reasons I prefer to make backup-clones with SuperDuper! or CarbonCopyCloner.)
[doublepost=1548266065][/doublepost]
Are you using FileVault? - I did for a short period... One has to add another bunch of spare space since FileVault itself also collects a lot of garbage until next reboot. Did make things somehow unstable too on my Powerbook.
(Sorry - this is not the answer to your question, but maybe of some interest)
Same principle as with a HDD. At least 25%. With TRIM you can go a little further but the less room the firmware has to rearrange data packets, the less effectively it can do its work.
With regard to TRIM, there may be some scope for getting it to work on a G5. I haven't looked too closely into it but there is/was a command line option in Linux for getting invoking TRIM and getting it to work manually. If you have a dual Linux/OSX setup and make your HFS+ volumes visible to Linux then you might just get them TRIMmed assuming that Linux can write to your OSX volumes, as permissions might be a stumbling block.
It's not something that I care to invest much time in pursuing but for those who like to tinker...
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Addonics, which is the company that makes the mSATA adapter I reference, makes a M.2 PCIE adapter. You can put two M.2's on it.
Something I intend to try with my Quad at some point.
https://www.addonics.com/products/ad3m2spx4.php
https://www.addonics.com/products/adm2nvmpx4.php
https://www.addonics.com/products/adm2px4.php
a couple things to keep in mind with those
none of those options will be bootable in a PCIe G5
and for the PCIe based M.2 products you must use a AHCI based M.2 drive as Leopard does not have an NVMe driver
(Leopards generic AHCI driver is luckily built for PowerPC so in theory you could use a PCIe based AHCI SSD in Leopard as say a storage drive, but you would not be able to boot from it sadly)
Thanks!
As with the current 4TB secondary drive, I'd have no intention of booting from it. Strictly for non OS stuff.
For right now though, that's well in the future.
Finally!
TM was stuck on the last 200mb for the last day, so I restarted yesterday. It finally completed this morning but then I got stuck on 'Finishing Backup'. That finally completed at 8pm tonight. Sheesh.
Should be good now though.
Here is my XBench result.
TM was stuck on the last 200mb for the last day, so I restarted yesterday. It finally completed this morning but then I got stuck on 'Finishing Backup'. That finally completed at 8pm tonight. Sheesh.
Should be good now though.
Here is my XBench result.
Your perseverance is legendary! Personally, I would have just hit stop, plugged it into Gigabit overnight and let it run while I was blissfully away from the keyboard
Nice results. The PB 17" score I posted on the SSD Benchmark thread was under Tiger, which appears to give better benchmarks than Leopard.
Now that the backup is finished, you can actually use it. Is there a noticeable improvement over the spinner?
The parts finally arrived for the Late 2008 MacBookPro 17" rebuild I mentioned. I think I'll take the new 128GB SSD out of my G5 Quad and put it into the MBP. The Quad will happily zip along with a 7200rpm 3.5" SATA HDD - it's not like it's a silent operator.
There are a few things I am noticing and they appear to be a tradeoff.Your perseverance is legendary! Personally, I would have just hit stop, plugged it into Gigabit overnight and let it run while I was blissfully away from the keyboard
Nice results. The PB 17" score I posted on the SSD Benchmark thread was under Tiger, which appears to give better benchmarks than Leopard.
Now that the backup is finished, you can actually use it. Is there a noticeable improvement over the spinner?
The parts finally arrived for the Late 2008 MacBookPro 17" rebuild I mentioned. I think I'll take the new 128GB SSD out of my G5 Quad and put it into the MBP. The Quad will happily zip along with a 7200rpm 3.5" SATA HDD - it's not like it's a silent operator.
First, system boot of course. Much quicker. I load a lot of crap after login and so that is appreciated. The Mac seems to have developed a slightly quicker pace.
Apps open a little faster, but not appreciably so. I am noticing that my mouse pointer is tracking faster than normal - to the point that sometimes I am overshooting what I am intending to click on. And the keyboard seems to be more responsive. Don't know if that's because of this or not.
I removed my memory cache for T4Fx and increased the cache size on the drive. That has made T4Fx slightly faster on this Mac - to the point where the bottleneck now actually seems to be the WiFi.
On the other hand, processor speed is the same. Nothing has changed here.
Heat is much reduced and the Mac is generally more quiet. During more intensive tasks however, the Mac tends to hover right at the tipping point of when the fans normally kick on. Usually, with a normal HDD they would and my lap would cool down. Now my lap is maintaining a constant (hot) temperature because the fans have not tripped.
But most of all, I seem to be noticing a slight decrease in Time Machine performance. It seems to be taking longer. I don't know why that is, but it's not too much of a concern as it's been completing the task. I am speculating that the SSD has more difficulty with small files, but I don't know.
I have chosen to try and solve the WiFi issue however. Last night I went and ordered a D-Link DWA-131 USB Wireless USB Adapter, which is 802.11n and supports 5Ghz, which I am running at home. So, we shall see what happens there.
I had though originally to run a ethernet cable, but I didn't have one long enough and didn't want to go through the machinations of moving things around to get a shorter one connected. Plenty of other Macs so letting it just chug along on WiFi was fine. Had this been my only Mac I would have made a way.
Overall, I'm happy with the upgrade. Ecstatic, no, but then I wasn't expecting to turn the Mac into my 15" MBP as far as performance goes. But happy.
There are a few things I am noticing and they appear to be a tradeoff.
First, system boot of course. Much quicker. I load a lot of crap after login and so that is appreciated. The Mac seems to have developed a slightly quicker pace.
Apps open a little faster, but not appreciably so. I am noticing that my mouse pointer is tracking faster than normal - to the point that sometimes I am overshooting what I am intending to click on. And the keyboard seems to be more responsive. Don't know if that's because of this or not.
I removed my memory cache for T4Fx and increased the cache size on the drive. That has made T4Fx slightly faster on this Mac - to the point where the bottleneck now actually seems to be the WiFi.
On the other hand, processor speed is the same. Nothing has changed here.
Heat is much reduced and the Mac is generally more quiet. During more intensive tasks however, the Mac tends to hover right at the tipping point of when the fans normally kick on. Usually, with a normal HDD they would and my lap would cool down. Now my lap is maintaining a constant (hot) temperature because the fans have not tripped.
But most of all, I seem to be noticing a slight decrease in Time Machine performance. It seems to be taking longer. I don't know why that is, but it's not too much of a concern as it's been completing the task. I am speculating that the SSD has more difficulty with small files, but I don't know.
I have chosen to try and solve the WiFi issue however. Last night I went and ordered a D-Link DWA-131 USB Wireless USB Adapter, which is 802.11n and supports 5Ghz, which I am running at home. So, we shall see what happens there.
I had though originally to run a ethernet cable, but I didn't have one long enough and didn't want to go through the machinations of moving things around to get a shorter one connected. Plenty of other Macs so letting it just chug along on WiFi was fine. Had this been my only Mac I would have made a way.
Overall, I'm happy with the upgrade. Ecstatic, no, but then I wasn't expecting to turn the Mac into my 15" MBP as far as performance goes. But happy.
Good post, thanks.
Let us know how that Wireless N Nano USB Adapter by D-Link works.
OK, weeks later…fixed!
Optical drive ribbon cable from old dead A1013 removed and swapped into this one.
Working now!
Optical drive ribbon cable from old dead A1013 removed and swapped into this one.
Working now!