SSD Drive

[NovaCoder]

Has any tried one of those cheap IDE->SATA converter boards? Other than the obvious heat advantages, an SSD would be wasted, unless you mean a compact flash card which is a good idea

Yep I tried it (because I'm a bit crazy).   I didn't get very far, I also tried it with both a FAST-ATA and an IdeFixExpress.

The problem is that the SATA SSD drive is not visible to the system using the standard 3.1 ROM, it's only after booting that you can load the newer drivers and use the drive.   So basically, you can use them as a second drive (with a secondary interface) but you can't use them as a boot drive.

I settled on a nice neat solution for my 1200, I've now got a SSD 16GB module directly mounted on an IdeFixExpress (4.6 MB/s).

[wawrzon]

What about the SCSI kit with Blizzard 060  or the SCSI3 port of CyberstormPPC? How would an SSD perform there?

i have a ide ssd on scsi bus of my csppc since years and it works very well. it is via acard adapter of course. next to maximal throughtput close to 40mbs, but random acces and writing of little files may still be slower. on the plus side its cool and quiet.

[Piru]

if you really want to be a pedant, 6 gigabits is actually closer to 750 megabytes

And if you want to be even more pedant: Serial ATA protocol uses 8b/10b encoding, meaning that transmitting 8 bits actually takes 10.

So it really maxes at 600, not at 750.

[johnklos]

Hi,

I've been using various SATA-IDE adapters for ages. There's no slowdown and in most instances where the IDE machine can handle the faster drive, SATA via an adapter has been noticeably faster than the fastest IDE drives I have.

IDE SSDs are not hard to find:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Legacy_Pro

On my A1200, I boot from an IDE attached CF card (which isn't quick; Amiga IDE, not the CF card, is pretty slow) and use a SATA drive attached to a SATA-IDE adapter which is then connected to a IDE-SCSI adapter which is connected to the Blizzard 1260 SCSI card, which is 10 megabytes a second. In AmigaDOS, I typically got 7 to 8 MB (big B) a second transferring large files over the Blizzard SCSI.

On my A4000, I can boot from the CyberStorm PPC SCSI (40 MB/sec), but hardly ever see more than 10 MB/sec in normal use. What makes all the difference for both the Blizzard SCSI and the CyberStorm SCSI is the DMA - you can clearly tell the difference between transferring on IDE (which slows everything down) and transferring on SCSI (which barely affects other programs).

Bottom line - a slow drive on DMA SCSI is MUCH faster, overall, than a fast drive on IDE.

[orange]

but what are you using Amiga for, so that hdd speed increase is so important? it can't be whdload. and booting is fast in any case.

[bbond007]

Hi ,this might be a stupid question ,but will the Amiga 1200 with 32mb ram and matrix accelerator work with a SSD drive ,or sata drive ,sorry if this question has already been asked ,best wishes Brian.

I have a IDE solid state disk-on-module and a dual SATA board that I connect to a bunch of eSATA devices including a 60gb OCZ SSD and bluray drive.

I have it connected to a FastATA but it should work well with a 4x IDE.

I get around 5.5mb/sec...

More info and pics:

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=59673

[mrmoonlight]

Hi thanks to all ,and i will read up on everything you kind folk have wrote ,i have just had a email from Amigakit ,and was wondering if any one has used one of these   ,The FastATA MK-IV controller with its maximum transfer rate of 16.6MB/s in the PIO 5 mode offers huge capacity reserve for fast mass storage devices, especially for fast hard drives. Therefore, applications may run much faster if they can have fast access to large data files. £87 which isnt cheap . ps this is what DonutKing mentioned ,so im not sure this would be any gain to me ,best wishes Brian.

[marcfrick2112]

but what are you using Amiga for, so that hdd speed increase is so important? it can't be whdload. and booting is fast in any case.

Well, orange compiling large ANIM's, system backups/restores, etc.
A hard-core Toaster user would prolly like the extra disk speed.... (Never met a Toaster user without a few thousand pics, framestores, logo's etc. littering thier HDD's....)

[spirantho]

Has any tried one of those cheap IDE->SATA converter boards?

Just for reference: my A4000 is connected using its onboard IDE to a SATA Dual Layer DVD+/-RW drive, via a IDE->SATA adaptor I bought for 99p on eBay.

It was a bit erratic at first, but seems to be fairly reliable these days.

[Ancalimon]

but what are you using Amiga for, so that hdd speed increase is so important? it can't be whdload. and booting is fast in any case.

I certainly need a fast hdd that does not use the cpu like IDE. Otherwise, VLab Motion does not work. (not that I use it that much anyway. My A4000T is broken since 2002. Hopefully it will get back to life this month.)