So, I finally bought an SATA-III SSD, a Crucial M4 256GB, 1,8",
after I heard some people say SATA-III SSDs are a no go and not all SSDs work in general.
It is mSATA and I use a mSATA-SATA connector. I chose this one, since it was said that this drive currently has the best garbage collection (since TRIM won't work under Mac OS on PowerPCs and for third party SSDs in general)
Funny thing (fresh from the package, unpartitioned). The SATA-ports on my AGP-G4's PCI cards won't see it in disk utility, but it is seen on the additonal IDE BUS of one of the SATA-PCI cards.
(so: mSATA--> SATA---> ATA-133 ---> PCI)
I can only format (partition) it under 10.5 and I have to disable "install OS 9 drivers". So I partitioned it to HFS+ under 10.5 and then started into 10.4, it was shown on the desktop/Finder, but partitioning it resulted into having an unmounted "mounting point".
I then booted into OS 10.5 again and partitioned it with "install OS 9 drivers" enabled. It resulted in the same. I did it again without OS 9 drivers and I got a mounted Drive again (you can see the Info "Mounting Point: activated" in Disk utility).
I then booted into 10.4, I started copying 300MB to it. It started and then said it could not complete the task, because it it unable to read or write the file.
When I open the Disc, I can see the folder, I copied, but it hangs up, when I open the folder.
The PCI cards:
it is very interesting,
the Macally combined SATA/ATA-PCI-Card:
is capable of reading SMART data. (System profiler sees it as SCSI device). On the SATA Port it does not recognized all drives (I have a lot of different HDDs), on the ATA-port it can see every SATA-drive with an adapter and read all SMART data. It supports boot for some drives.
The Sonnet SATA-PCI card:
can not read SMART, sees all drives, but allows no drives bigger than 2TB (they work, but get damaged headers and filesystems), and is bootable.
A "PC"-card, 4x SATA, SIL3124:
is not bootable, sees all drives, can handle 3TB without corruption, can see no SMART.
THE SSD:
does work
- not under 10.4!
- under 10.5
a) not on the Macally Card (not on SATA; IDE can/must be used to partition, but finder is very slow in accessing it afterwards on the IDE bus, I saw the same for SATA-HDDs, but they gave at least some reaction and the spinning wheel stopped some time),
b) it works on the SIL3124 "PC" card (that seems to be very forgiving on a lot hardware anyway and shows drives as externally connected, (orange icon)), can read from and write to it. Same for the Sonnet-2xSATA-Card.
BUT! it has to be formatted under 10.5 via the IDE BUS and you can't install OS 9 drivers.
I did not test the onboard IDE BUS, because of the 128GB limit in these G4s.
Hm, I have to think about it, if I want to try that SSD in my ibook via mSATA-IDE adapter, where I have 10.4 installed... given how big an effort it is to open these ibooks.
EDIT: I did now restart the computer several times and then thought I'd just try it again, to partition the SSD via SATA on the Sonnet Card. (I wanted to change the Drive's name.) Now it works, then I did it again and tried installing OS 9 drivers and even that worked. So it seems under 10.5 it works, if you do the very first partitioning on the ATA-port. After that it seems ok to do partitioning on the SATA port.
after I heard some people say SATA-III SSDs are a no go and not all SSDs work in general.
It is mSATA and I use a mSATA-SATA connector. I chose this one, since it was said that this drive currently has the best garbage collection (since TRIM won't work under Mac OS on PowerPCs and for third party SSDs in general)
Funny thing (fresh from the package, unpartitioned). The SATA-ports on my AGP-G4's PCI cards won't see it in disk utility, but it is seen on the additonal IDE BUS of one of the SATA-PCI cards.
(so: mSATA--> SATA---> ATA-133 ---> PCI)
I can only format (partition) it under 10.5 and I have to disable "install OS 9 drivers". So I partitioned it to HFS+ under 10.5 and then started into 10.4, it was shown on the desktop/Finder, but partitioning it resulted into having an unmounted "mounting point".
I then booted into OS 10.5 again and partitioned it with "install OS 9 drivers" enabled. It resulted in the same. I did it again without OS 9 drivers and I got a mounted Drive again (you can see the Info "Mounting Point: activated" in Disk utility).
I then booted into 10.4, I started copying 300MB to it. It started and then said it could not complete the task, because it it unable to read or write the file.
When I open the Disc, I can see the folder, I copied, but it hangs up, when I open the folder.
The PCI cards:
it is very interesting,
the Macally combined SATA/ATA-PCI-Card:
is capable of reading SMART data. (System profiler sees it as SCSI device). On the SATA Port it does not recognized all drives (I have a lot of different HDDs), on the ATA-port it can see every SATA-drive with an adapter and read all SMART data. It supports boot for some drives.
The Sonnet SATA-PCI card:
can not read SMART, sees all drives, but allows no drives bigger than 2TB (they work, but get damaged headers and filesystems), and is bootable.
A "PC"-card, 4x SATA, SIL3124:
is not bootable, sees all drives, can handle 3TB without corruption, can see no SMART.
THE SSD:
does work
- not under 10.4!
- under 10.5
a) not on the Macally Card (not on SATA; IDE can/must be used to partition, but finder is very slow in accessing it afterwards on the IDE bus, I saw the same for SATA-HDDs, but they gave at least some reaction and the spinning wheel stopped some time),
b) it works on the SIL3124 "PC" card (that seems to be very forgiving on a lot hardware anyway and shows drives as externally connected, (orange icon)), can read from and write to it. Same for the Sonnet-2xSATA-Card.
BUT! it has to be formatted under 10.5 via the IDE BUS and you can't install OS 9 drivers.
I did not test the onboard IDE BUS, because of the 128GB limit in these G4s.
Hm, I have to think about it, if I want to try that SSD in my ibook via mSATA-IDE adapter, where I have 10.4 installed... given how big an effort it is to open these ibooks.
EDIT: I did now restart the computer several times and then thought I'd just try it again, to partition the SSD via SATA on the Sonnet Card. (I wanted to change the Drive's name.) Now it works, then I did it again and tried installing OS 9 drivers and even that worked. So it seems under 10.5 it works, if you do the very first partitioning on the ATA-port. After that it seems ok to do partitioning on the SATA port.
Last edited: