iPod 480GB SSD

[Chedda]

Since this is grouped in 'other projects' I have completed a different kind of project. Kind of off-topic for a change.

I had thought of a neat little project that involved an iPod 5.5G 30GB device. I picked this guy up for about 30 bucks with a spinning platter disk. It still worked but I wanted all of my old tunes in the car and not just a piece of it.

Parts:
30GB iPod 5.5
New black housing - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Black-F ... 01395.html
New black clickwheel - local shop
New battery - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Sh ... 39860.html
SSD - http://www.microcenter.com/product/4459 ... Z-M5E500BW
SSD 40-pin tray - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Beautif ... 12849.html

The ipod was white but here is the before.
[spoiler="pics"]

[/spoiler]

[spoiler="Here is the take apart"]Need a razor blade or guitar pic. I prefer a blade

Start to crack it open but go slow


Once you start to open it, watch out for the battery cable and the headphone jack cable


The inside guts as it sits. I had to re-use the cable from the original hard drive. Be VERY careful as this cable is a bugger to get back on and can be torn easily.



Everything out and spread apart. Neat huh?
[/spoiler]

All done!
Formatted in iTunes and transferred the music.
[spoiler="pic"][/spoiler]

[DoubleFlush]

That's pretty cool!
I remember my cousin had one of those with a 60Gb hdd and his dad (and my own) were amazed by the size of that hdd, as well as stumped as to why he would ever want a hdd that big. As a reference, the hdd on my dad's main computer at the time was 12Gb.

The issue with those was, of course, the hdd. Spinning discs in something that portable was never a good idea. This mod is really cool, and i'm kind of jealous. Also, it looks really clean! Well done.

[Chedda]

Surprisingly it was easy to do. I used to work for apple back when these things were the shiz.. I was worried that the msata board would not fit in a 30gb case. It is a tight fit inside.

The casing got all scratched up since I use it for the car, the gym, traveling, this thing goes everywhere and the battery life is way better than with the spinning drive.

Does anyone need a 30gb spinning hdd to fit in their broken ipod? I know a guy... haha I think it still has the previous owners music on it.

[alnasique]

Hello, I wonder if you still monitor the thread..
My Ipod is 5.5 64mb (80gb- model)
I bought a similar SSD from amazon, where it was sold as MZ-M5E500BW. What I received did not have the last two letters BW though. I can see in your post, yours lacks them as well. Hope it's not a problem? and all PN SN PSID are all different. But model is the same. It's attached. Still no luck getting to work. I have iPOD's sad face on the screen, then - PLEASE WAIT VERY LOW BATTERY. and it kept restarting.
Did you format the SSD before installing it? Get any issues/errors like these? Did you try installing Rockbox?
How is the battery life compared to HDD version?

Hope you will hear me.

Thanks,
Serge

[Chedda]

I never saw the reply. My apologies.

I did not format the drive before hand. I only plugged the ipod into a computer and had itunes go through the format. The battery life is far better (2 solid weeks of playing music).

[Helder]

I did something similar for my wife's Ipod but used SD cards, also did this for another person but the Itunes software would not show anything over 60GB or was it 80GB? Been a long time and that was such a bummer, I was surprised you got so much space to show.