Moving every Amiga to SSD now
- Thread starter Xanxi
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Considering how cheap good ssd's are I don't think is too much.The speed, size, and reliability have been great. Get over 4 megs a second on the 3000 SCSI.
The biggest reason not to have an SSD in an Amiga is their data retention. Most are rated at approx 6 months unpowered. My Amiga goes months unpowered and when it is switched back on it's never long enough or write intensive enough for an SSD to refresh the entire drive.
Huh? Are you using enterprise SSDs? Well, don't. Client SSDs retain data much longer, it depends on the temperature.
"In the past week, quite a few media outlets have posted articles claiming that SSDs will lose data in a matter of days if left unpowered. While there is some (read: very, very little) truth to that, it has created a lot of chatter and confusion in forums and even I have received a few questions about the validity of the claims, so rather than responding to individual emails/tweets from people who want to know more, I thought I would explain the matter in depth to everyone at once."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data-retention
Whilst I tend to go for CF card solutions, I've found that a lot of CF cards are so unreliable.
I've had problems with partitions becoming corrupted on my CF cards out of nowhere.
I've not had these problems on a proper hard drive.
I've had problems with partitions becoming corrupted on my CF cards out of nowhere.
I've not had these problems on a proper hard drive.
I can only speak from my experience. I have used owc ssd drives in Amiga's for man years and they have been more reliable than the hard disks they replaced. Once in a long while I run pfs disk doctor to check the drives.
While I had no issues with CF in the very short period of usage (I just hopped on the CF bandwagon about a month ago, only because the Amiga I bought had it), I'm not surprised that other people have problems with them. In my head, a CF or SD card is not something that's designed to be used as a hard drive replacement. It's just something you temporarily put your data on just to transfer it to a computer with a proper hard drive. On the other hand, SSD is designed exactly for that. I have four old SSDs (CSSD V64, Vertex 2, Vertex 3 and Agility). I never spared them, always threw everything at them including swap/pagefile and databases on multiple operating systems and never had any issues. Not a single block was relocated on any of them during all these years. Three of them are in everyday use since I bought them and CSSD V64 (my first SSD ever, oldest of the bunch) is reserved for Amiga and is going in as soon as the adapter arrives.
No matter what technology is used to store data, one should never forget to backup.
I agree that 200 usd is a big up front cost. They are a really clean solution. On my cs SCSI I get over 27 megs per second, so I feel it is worth it. Sadly I remember back in the nineties I paid over 300 usd for a 200 meg drive. Now I get 50 gigs for 50 dollars.The only issue with the acard is that they will not work with warp engine NCR SCSI... Other than that it is a perfect fit for the Amiga and a decent value for me. Considering a sata SCSI drive goes for crazy money.
@matt3k - What exactly do you have on your cs chain to get >27m/sec? I've got a CSPPC and want to use SCSI but would rather not hunt down spinny disks. I'd prefer to use whatever formula you're using and have it "just work" instead of trying to figure it out myself and waste a bunch of money on suboptimal stuff 
I'm not using an SSD with an Amiga because i dont switch it on often enough. But I'm an SSD designer with OCZ and I know how our client drives work and they really wouldn't like being switched off for months, switched back on for an hour mainly for reads and then switched off for months. That anandtech article is nonsense, as most of his about SSD technology always are.
IDE/SATA adapter arrived today. HDToolBox sees correct manufacturer and model number but displays negative capacity (AFAIK this is normal). I'm using scsi.device 43.24 which should be working with drives up to 128GB. However, I can't create partitions outside of 8GB range, the graph shows only first 8GB. Tried even newer scsi.device supplied by ClassicWB 3.1 ("MyFiles/LargeHD/128GB Support") but the HDD LED is always lit and Amiga seems frozen except I can move the busy mouse pointer around. Ok, I've read that OS 3.9 supports large hard drives out of the box so I connected the SSD to PC and gave WinUAE direct access to it. Booted from 3.9 emergency disk and this one sees only 12.6 GB. The *uck? Typed cylinders and stuff manually to force it to 64 GB, created partitions but can't format a partition which is beyond 8GB range, I get "seek failure" error.
I'm just trying to get it working with PFS3 (PDS\03) partitions in ClassicWB 3.1. Both scsi.device 43.24 and PFS3 speak the SCSI lingo and they worked in perfect harmony with 4GB CF cards.
Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? The only thing I can think of is to ignore HDToolBox's graph and type start and end cylinders manually when creating partition(s) beyond 8GB.
I'm just trying to get it working with PFS3 (PDS\03) partitions in ClassicWB 3.1. Both scsi.device 43.24 and PFS3 speak the SCSI lingo and they worked in perfect harmony with 4GB CF cards.
Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? The only thing I can think of is to ignore HDToolBox's graph and type start and end cylinders manually when creating partition(s) beyond 8GB.
I'm yet to receive an adapter thus I couldn't connect my SATA drive but there's large article on EAB about different types of IDE, etc: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=61666
There are some stuff with maxtransfer, etc. Apparently you need scsi.device v43.45 but even then it'll be some non-trivial dance to make sure "bad" one will not be picked up... If/when you'll manage to tame that beast we'll want all details!
There are some stuff with maxtransfer, etc. Apparently you need scsi.device v43.45 but even then it'll be some non-trivial dance to make sure "bad" one will not be picked up... If/when you'll manage to tame that beast we'll want all details!
Thanks, scsi.device 43.45 works. The trick when booting from 3.9 emergency disk is to create only the system partition, finish installation on it and after reboot 43.45 is loaded by default and HdToolBox sees entire drive! 
At least in WinUAE it does, haven't tried it yet with real Amiga. Will try it and continue with ClassicWB 3.1 setup later, right now I'm trying to keep my parrot away from Amiga, he wants it bad. 
EDIT:
Ok, Amiga didn't want to boot OS 3.9. I had to boot from floppy, LoadModule scsi.device and then it would boot.
I've checked the HdToolBox and this is what WinUAE used:
Cylinders: 32768
Heads: 16
Blocks per Track: 256
Blocks per Cylinder: 4096
Total number of Blocks: 134217728
Bytes per Block: 512
Size: 64.0G
When I tried the exact same numbers in 3.1 with the same scsi.device HdToolBox stopped me and said the number of blocks I requested (X) is higher than actual number of blocks on the drive (Y). I divided Y by X, multiplied by 32768 and rounded down the result to even 100. I lost about 1.5 GB this way but at least it's working, sort of.
The issue I'm having right now is that Amiga doesn't want to boot first partition (500 MB) with original scsi.device from the KS 3.1. In fact, Early Startup doesn't even see the drive. I've tried both PDS3 and FFS as first partition, it's always the same. The only way I can boot is from floppy which loads scsi.device 43.45, reboots and boots from SSD.
I'll redo everything from scratch but this time I'll use autodetected drive parameters. If ROM still won't be able to see the drive or the capacity won't be even close to 60GB then I'm afraid it's a showstopper for me. Well, another IDE/SATA adapter is coming these days and I'll try again on that one too but I doubt there will be any difference.
At least in WinUAE it does, haven't tried it yet with real Amiga. Will try it and continue with ClassicWB 3.1 setup later, right now I'm trying to keep my parrot away from Amiga, he wants it bad. EDIT:
Ok, Amiga didn't want to boot OS 3.9. I had to boot from floppy, LoadModule scsi.device and then it would boot.
I've checked the HdToolBox and this is what WinUAE used:
Cylinders: 32768
Heads: 16
Blocks per Track: 256
Blocks per Cylinder: 4096
Total number of Blocks: 134217728
Bytes per Block: 512
Size: 64.0G
When I tried the exact same numbers in 3.1 with the same scsi.device HdToolBox stopped me and said the number of blocks I requested (X) is higher than actual number of blocks on the drive (Y). I divided Y by X, multiplied by 32768 and rounded down the result to even 100. I lost about 1.5 GB this way but at least it's working, sort of.
The issue I'm having right now is that Amiga doesn't want to boot first partition (500 MB) with original scsi.device from the KS 3.1. In fact, Early Startup doesn't even see the drive. I've tried both PDS3 and FFS as first partition, it's always the same. The only way I can boot is from floppy which loads scsi.device 43.45, reboots and boots from SSD.
I'll redo everything from scratch but this time I'll use autodetected drive parameters. If ROM still won't be able to see the drive or the capacity won't be even close to 60GB then I'm afraid it's a showstopper for me. Well, another IDE/SATA adapter is coming these days and I'll try again on that one too but I doubt there will be any difference.
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Hey Esc,
I have a 3000D with a CS MKIII. I used a standard terminator on end of the chain. I used a Acard SCSI 68pin (don't remember the model number, but it is a 68 pin connector (they have an identical encasement with 50 pin) so be careful to get the right one.) It is an enclosure not a bridge, this might be it? (http://www.ebay.com/itm/68-Pin-ACAR...ATA-II-adapter-for-2-5-SATA-HDD-/261290549796).
The SSD was an OWC 3G Mercury Electra.
All works perfectly. Enjoy the speed. It is nice that when you click on any drawer icon to have the contents display instantly...
I have a 3000D with a CS MKIII. I used a standard terminator on end of the chain. I used a Acard SCSI 68pin (don't remember the model number, but it is a 68 pin connector (they have an identical encasement with 50 pin) so be careful to get the right one.) It is an enclosure not a bridge, this might be it? (http://www.ebay.com/itm/68-Pin-ACAR...ATA-II-adapter-for-2-5-SATA-HDD-/261290549796).
The SSD was an OWC 3G Mercury Electra.
All works perfectly. Enjoy the speed. It is nice that when you click on any drawer icon to have the contents display instantly...
@matt3k - What exactly do you have on your cs chain to get >27m/sec? I've got a CSPPC and want to use SCSI but would rather not hunt down spinny disks. I'd prefer to use whatever formula you're using and have it "just work" instead of trying to figure it out myself and waste a bunch of money on suboptimal stuff
Interesting point there!
However, my A500Plus with 4 GB IDE SSD does not seem to lose any data even if it is rarely switched on.
I seem to remember that the data loss occurs if unpowered state is cumulated with a temperature over 50°C (there was a paper about that a few months ago on the internet).
- - - Updated - - -
Hey Esc,
I have a 3000D with a CS MKIII. I used a standard terminator on end of the chain. I used a Acard SCSI 68pin (don't remember the model number, but it is a 68 pin connector (they have an identical encasement with 50 pin) so be careful to get the right one.) It is an enclosure not a bridge, this might be it? (http://www.ebay.com/itm/68-Pin-ACAR...ATA-II-adapter-for-2-5-SATA-HDD-/261290549796).
The SSD was an OWC 3G Mercury Electra.
All works perfectly. Enjoy the speed. It is nice that when you click on any drawer icon to have the contents display instantly...
@matt3k - What exactly do you have on your cs chain to get >27m/sec? I've got a CSPPC and want to use SCSI but would rather not hunt down spinny disks. I'd prefer to use whatever formula you're using and have it "just work" instead of trying to figure it out myself and waste a bunch of money on suboptimal stuff
Did you actually bought a 250 USD adapter just to get a hard drive for your A3000? :huh:
I have bougt myself a chinese 2 USD ide to sata 44 pins adapter to get going with this SSD project
I wonder if this would make Amiga detect SATA SSD:
http://amigastore.eu/en/129-4xeide-99-interface.html
Considering the price, it seems better to buy IDE/PATA SSD such as this one:
http://www.amazon.com/KingSpec-2-5-inch-Solid-SM2236-Controller/dp/B008RWKFYE
fitzsteve can't praise KingSpec enough.
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=934558&postcount=51
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=934565&postcount=53
EDIT:
Bought Kingspec 32GB PATA SSD, Amiga doesn't see it until updated scsi.device is loaded. Same issue as with SATA SSD. I'll keep using SATA SSD and boot from floppy.
Anyone had better luck?
Silly me, last night I just put the drive without creating a bootable partition and of course Amiga didn't report the drive in Early Startup Menu.
Couple of minutes ago I properly created bootable partition and Amiga boots from Kingspec just fine! I'm so happy right now I could burst.
http://amigastore.eu/en/129-4xeide-99-interface.html
Considering the price, it seems better to buy IDE/PATA SSD such as this one:
http://www.amazon.com/KingSpec-2-5-inch-Solid-SM2236-Controller/dp/B008RWKFYE
fitzsteve can't praise KingSpec enough.
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=934558&postcount=51
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=934565&postcount=53
EDIT:
Bought Kingspec 32GB PATA SSD, Amiga doesn't see it until updated scsi.device is loaded. Same issue as with SATA SSD. I'll keep using SATA SSD and boot from floppy.
Anyone had better luck?
Silly me, last night I just put the drive without creating a bootable partition and of course Amiga didn't report the drive in Early Startup Menu.
Couple of minutes ago I properly created bootable partition and Amiga boots from Kingspec just fine! I'm so happy right now I could burst.
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