Moving every Amiga to SSD now

  • Thread starter Thread starter Xanxi
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies Replies 39
  • Views Views 8240
Xanxi

Xanxi

Well-known member
Donator
AmiBayer
Joined
Jun 10, 2010
Posts
3,010
Country
France
Region
Paris
Hi.

Surely you have noticed that SSD are cheaper and cheaper.

Now that i can have as much as 1,5 TB on two SSD on my laptop, i wonder why i would not move every amiga to SSD too.

Actually, my A500 Plus already has an old IDE 4GB SSD for years.
Except that it needs a reset on first boot to detect the drive, it is reliable and 100% silent so far.
Nothing like a CF card, which are not reliable at all in my experience (no need to discuss this again).

So, i intend to buy 16 GB or 32 GB SSD and stick them in my A1200 (hum, silent again!) and A4000.

I need a good IDE adapter for that (or SCSI) to SATA or mSATA SSD.

However, i wonder about the TRIM function on the Amiga and how to align a FFS or SFS partition on an Amiga.

SSD misaligned and with no TRIM leads to massive failure with loss of data, as i experienced once with a Windows XP computer.

Do you have any advice on this?
 
I don't think there is any way to support TRIM on the Amiga, but it shouldn't be relevant anyway. TRIM is just a way of telling the SSD when a block is free so it can start the (slow) erasing process. Without TRIM, erasing cannot be started until a block is overwritten as it has to be done before new data can be written. As such, the flash load is the same and unless the firmware is faulty, should not cause any reliability issues.

For various reasons, I do not use TRIM on my SSDs in my PCs and this causes the write performance to go down from about 500MB/s to 150-200MB/s. Since this is way above even the highest end Amiga, it is not an issue.

I have an old 80GB Intel X25-M that I have though about putting in my 1200, although the CF solution has worked perfectly for several years (never had a CF card die on me). This model does not support TRIM and I suspect that the 16GB and 32GB SSDs you are talking about does not have TRIM either.

Regarding alignment, it might be possible to align partitions on the Amiga, however I cannot see how that relates to SSD reliability. In cheap SSDs, the wear leveling algorithm might work badly, causing SSDs to die early due to frequent updates of the same flash cell.
 
I'm using a 60GB Intel SSD with an AData SCSI UW to SATA adapter on my A4000D with a CSPPC and gets around 30MB/s so I totaly agree with you. For a few years ago I also replaced all my mechanical harddrives with DOM (Disk On Modules) and they work very good and hardly produce an heat at all :)
 
I guess it's only me that actually likes the evocative background wirr of an old Seagate hard drive nestled in my Miggy.
 
I had a 320MB HDD in my A600 and while it worked fine, it sounded like an angle grinder so it was nice to have it replaced with a CF card. :)
 
Last edited:
tokyoracer said:
I guess it's only me that actually likes the evocative background wirr of an old Seagate hard drive nestled in my Miggy.
Click to expand...
Nope all of mine have mechanical drives too, I won't be changing any time soon either :)
 
-Acid- said:
Nope all of mine have mechanical drives too, I won't be changing any time soon either :)
Click to expand...

I actually find them more reliable too, sometimes I have CF cards randomy stop working and need a complete re-format for them to work again. Yet I got hard drives as old as the early 90's that hold all their info and still work great. Many of mine arn't even that loud though I have had some right screamers that are beyond my acceptance. Access times for more modern mechanical drives arn't even that much faster than SD drives either. Certainly not that noticeable IMHO.

It's all well and good adding all this new hardware but by the time you modernise as much as you can in your Amiga, you end up needling out alot of the feel and charm of the system by taking out all the period hardware. Part of the experience after all is to take a trip to the past, is it not?
 
Last edited:
It is never going to matter with the ridiculously-slow (comparatively) read/write speeds offered by Amigas.
 
RichyV said:
It is never going to matter with the ridiculously-slow (comparatively) read/write speeds offered by Amigas.
Click to expand...

Alignment still matters for SSD life span on Amiga. If you don't align partitions then you have situations where one file ends in a physical block and another one begins in the same block, resulting in 2 writes to that block instead of 1.
IIRC you can move start/end partition pointers in HDToolbox and align them. I don't remember if you can choose block size, it would be best to choose SSD's native block size if possible.

Now to my question... My Amiga 1200 in original case has just IDE connector (no SCSI) and I have an old 64 GB SATA SSD which is gathering dust for years. What adapter exactly do I need to connect these two?
 
Last edited:
Unless you are using your Amiga extensively, I doubt that flash lifespan will be an issue. It might only last 50 years instead of 100 years if it was aligned.. :)

I would expect at least 50TB total writes from an SSD (and many will do several hundred TBs, up to 1PB before they die), so go ahead and calculate how many years that is with your typical usage.

And running programs and WHDLoad games doesn't write much to the disk so doesn't really cause wear.
 
Last edited:
You're right. Amiga doesn't write much at all and wear leveling over 64 GB or more would last close to forever. Electronic components in Amiga would stop working long before the SSD.
 
disco said:
Alignment still matters for SSD life span on Amiga.
Click to expand...
Only if you have very old SSD with inefficient firmware.
disco said:
If you don't align partitions then you have situations where one file ends in a physical block and another one begins in the same block, resulting in 2 writes to that block instead of 1.
IIRC you can move start/end partition pointers in HDToolbox and align them. I don't remember if you can choose block size, it would be best to choose SSD's native block size if possible.
Click to expand...
Note that native erase blocks could be huge: 2MiB or more.

disco said:
Now to my question... My Amiga 1200 in original case has just IDE connector (no SCSI) and I have an old 64 GB SATA SSD which is gathering dust for years. What adapter exactly do I need to connect these two?
Click to expand...
Heh. SCSI<->SATA are problematic (as in: expensive), IDE ones are easy. My guess would be that any cheap one will work, they are pretty low-level. I should know [relatively] soon: I've ordered that one - looks like what I need and have only one problem: looks like they are using stags and dogs to deliver it because promised delivery time is 30 days.
 
khimru said:
Heh. SCSI<->SATA are problematic (as in: expensive), IDE ones are easy. My guess would be that any cheap one will work, they are pretty low-level. I should know [relatively] soon: I've ordered that one - looks like what I need and have only one problem: looks like they are using stags and dogs to deliver it because promised delivery time is 30 days.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I'm thinking about getting this one and longer F/F IDE 44-pin cable to prevent SSD sitting on top of hot Indy. Moving it under the grill, towards the floppy would be best, it's always cold there.
 
Do you know of any small IDE-mSata Adapter to fit a small form factor mSata SSD, without the need for an IDE to SATA to mSATA adapter?

I think mSata can be fitted anywhere in any Amiga case.
 
KieranD212 said:
So what exactly are the benefits of running a SATA SSD? Just seems a tad overkill.
Click to expand...

I'd say capacity and silence, same as CF. It's definitely an overkill but I have a SSD laying around so it costs me less than 8 quids for the adapter and shipping.
 
No matter the firmware alignment is important for an ssd.
Hddtoolbox should have that capability, not certain on it though.

Advantage of an ssd over an hdd. No chance of mechanical part failure.
Lower latency on random access(which is moot since the amiga mostly does linear access).
Far less energy consumption.

But all above perks also count for cfcards.
 
The acard 2000 cards support both 50 pin and 68 pin (depending on model) SCSI to SATA. They enclose the SSD nicely in a case that mounts beautifully to the Amiga... This is for big box Amiga's only...

I use OWC SSD's and have had no issues in my Amigas for many years... Think good firmware is the trick...

Xanxi said:
Hi.

Surely you have noticed that SSD are cheaper and cheaper.

Now that i can have as much as 1,5 TB on two SSD on my laptop, i wonder why i would not move every amiga to SSD too.

Actually, my A500 Plus already has an old IDE 4GB SSD for years.
Except that it needs a reset on first boot to detect the drive, it is reliable and 100% silent so far.
Nothing like a CF card, which are not reliable at all in my experience (no need to discuss this again).

So, i intend to buy 16 GB or 32 GB SSD and stick them in my A1200 (hum, silent again!) and A4000.

I need a good IDE adapter for that (or SCSI) to SATA or mSATA SSD.

However, i wonder about the TRIM function on the Amiga and how to align a FFS or SFS partition on an Amiga.

SSD misaligned and with no TRIM leads to massive failure with loss of data, as i experienced once with a Windows XP computer.

Do you have any advice on this?
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

AmiNeo
  • Locked
Gaming PC With R9 280 Dual-X, i5 and SSD (now includes splits)
Replies
2
Views
939
AmiNeo
AmiNeo
Back
Top Bottom