Hi folks,

Over the years I've had problems with my A1XE. It seems to devour HDDs.

I've recently had yet another go atreplacing the HDDs only to discover too late that a faulty IDE ribbon cable was contributing to my problems.

IDE HDDs arebecoming scarcer than hen's teeth and quite expensive for the available sizes, so my thoughts have been turning towards a SIL SATA card and SATA drives, but has anyone gone down the road of fitting an SSD in their XE? Are there any pitfalls?

_________________
Fred Booth
========================================
A500, A600, A1200 c/w Mediator and 030
AmigaOne and OS4.1
Mac LCII, G4 Powermac running OSX + Amigakit and MorphOS 3.0
Dell Mini 10 Netbook running IcAros and AmigaForever+Amikit+AmigaSys
2006 Macb

@OldAmigan

I can only speek for my sam460, but there it was really problematic to find a SSD that really works. The problem with my setup is that I rely on the internal SATA port that only supports PIO. The thing is that apparently lots of SSDs don't handle PIO correctly.

I don't know about your XE, but if you want a recommendation to be on the safe side I'd say:
Samsung 850 EVO.

However, in your case with a dedicated SATA card it should not make a difference which SSD you use. A SiI 3112 SATA card should do for example.

Good luck!

Last edited by Daytona675x on 16-Oct-2015 at 09:24 AM.
Last edited by Daytona675x on 16-Oct-2015 at 09:22 AM.
Last edited by Daytona675x on 16-Oct-2015 at 09:21 AM.

_________________
AmigaOS 4.1 FE (sam460ex Radeon 9200 / RadeonHD), MorphOS 3.8 (PowerMac G4 733MHz Radeon 9000), AROS (x86), A1200 (060 80MHz Indivision MK2), A500, A600, CDTV
Wings Remastered Development Diary

@OldAmigan

I use Kingston SSDs on both the X-1000 and the X-5000. The boot volume is one of the partitions on the 2.5" 120 GB SSD on the X-5000.

It loads the Kickstart modules from SSD in just over a second!!

For the performance, the price is trivial (less than $100 IIRC).

_________________
cheers
tony

Hyperion Support Forum: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php

@Daytona675x

I don't know what version of sam460sata.device you have there, but only the very first version was PIO-only. Looking at the release notes, I see DMA support mentioned as far back as 2012.

The current version (released with Final Edition last year) is V53.20 (24-Sep-2014).

_________________
cheers
tony

Hyperion Support Forum: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php

Quote:

tonyw wrote: I use Kingston SSDs on both the X-1000 and the X-5000. The boot volume is one of the partitions on the 2.5" 120 GB SSD on the X-5000. It loads the Kickstart modules from SSD in just over a second!! For the performance, the price is trivial (less than $100 IIRC).

There are several model series of Kingston SSDs (S200, S300, KC300 etc.). Do they all work ok with X1000/X5000? Are the advanced features of the more expensive models useful also with Amiga, or is it best to choose the least expensive ones?

@Gregor

Can't answer that, but the 120 GB model I have is the SV300S37A/120G.

I'm pretty sure that any SSD with a SATA interface is going to work OK in any NG Amiga.

_________________
cheers
tony

Hyperion Support Forum: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php

@tonyw
Sadly it just doesn't work reliable despite of the latest driver, at least not for me (and some other guys, e.g. Costel from Hyperion who actually helped me "solving" it). Only stable configuration on my sam460ex is PIO with that Samsung SSD if using the internal SATA port. If using DMA the system becomes unstable, if using a different SSD that doesn't handle PIO correctly I get data coruption very soon.

_________________
AmigaOS 4.1 FE (sam460ex Radeon 9200 / RadeonHD), MorphOS 3.8 (PowerMac G4 733MHz Radeon 9000), AROS (x86), A1200 (060 80MHz Indivision MK2), A500, A600, CDTV
Wings Remastered Development Diary

@tonyw

Quote:

I don't know what version of sam460sata.device you have there, but only the very first version was PIO-only. Looking at the release notes, I see DMA support mentioned as far back as 2012.

That note only refers to a change that was made in the ide driver common code. The sam460sata.device driver is still PIO only.

@OldAmigan

I have an old OCZ Vertex 30G drive in mine. It was used, got it from a co-worker a few years ago when he upgraded to a newer one.

In my case, I have a SIL3114 PCI card, but can't find where I put it. As it is the A1XE won't boot from that unless you have the un-released uBoot 1.1.4 ROM for the XE. So I got an IDE-SATA adapter to hook it up through the on-board IDE. This adapter is the kind that plugs directly into the motherboard socket, so no IDE cables needed.

I'm not sure (will have to check when I get home) but I think this is the adapter I bought in a MicroCenter store, but I could not find it in their online store any more: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200196&cm_re=sata_ide_adapter-_-12-200-196-_-Product

So far it works fine, seems a little snappier than what I had before. Thing is this old SSD is pretty worn out, the SMART data indicates it has gone past it's expected write cycles already. So I don't expect it to last much longer.

But now that I've made the switch, putting in a replacement will be easy. Just have to plug it in the other port on my adapter and copy the drive over.

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@tonyw

>>It loads the Kickstart modules from SSD in just over a second!!

How do you do that, my boottime is still crap with a SSD as bootdisk....

_________________
Theres a time to live and a time to die
When its time to meet the maker
Theres a time to live but isnt it strange
That as soon as you're born you're dying

@OldAmigan

I have been using one for a couple of years (and I'm using it right now, while writing this).

A1 XE G4 + Silicon 3512 + Kingston SSDNow 100V

It works nicely. Only drawbacks:
* you have to boot from an IDE HD anyway (I turn that drive off from the startup-sequence);
* it conflicts with the USB drivers: reading/writing from/to USB might be deadly (especially with files above a few MBs).

_________________
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC

I've had 2 x 32 GB Patriot SSD's (pulls from an older RAID 0 gaming machine I had) in my SAM 440ep machine for years, never had even a hint of a problem with them.

Got the machine in a very small Mini-ITX case with a silent PSU, runs like a dream and completely silent.

Using a OCZ ARC 100 (240 GB) in my Sam440ep-Flex.

Edit: takes about 4-5 seconds to load the kickstart modules with my Sam440ep@733 MHz.

Last edited by duga on 17-Oct-2015 at 06:34 PM.

@OldAmigan

I hve o my SAM460ex and SSD (120GB) installed:

#c:IDETool -d sii3114ide.device 2
-------------------ATA device information-------------------
Dev type : KINGSTON SVP200S37A120G
Remov Dev : no
Remov Med : no (probably harddisk)
Revision : 502ABBF0
Serial # : 50026B722B01DA88
LBA : yes
Tot. Secs : 234441648
Tot. Size : 120034123776 bytes, 117220 mbytes, 117 gbytes

http://www.amazon.es/Kingston-SVP200S37A-120G-s%C3%B3lido-interno/dp/B008MDVLBY


Works fine since a couple of years.

@

A couple of mounths ago, I had a SSD (Scandisk 120Go) on a sil3114 pci card.
There were absolutly no difference of speed between a "nomal" Sata drive and this one... So I bought a SSHD (prices are best and you could have a bigger capacity volume for the same results/speed/access.).
In my opinion, for now, a SSD drive is not completly suported on AmigaOS, soyou can easyly see the speed increase on a Pc, but on AmigaOS, nothingvery important...

Last edited by pseudaxos on 17-Oct-2015 at 12:27 PM.
Last edited by pseudaxos on 17-Oct-2015 at 11:29 AM.

@tonyw

Quote:

tonyw wrote: @OldAmigan I use Kingston SSDs on both the X-1000 and the X-5000. The boot volume is one of the partitions on the 2.5" 120 GB SSD on the X-5000. It loads the Kickstart modules from SSD in just over a second!!

you're kidding?! my samsung ssd in my x1000 loads the kickstart modules as slow as my old hdd - no speed increase.
what the heck...!? so maybe i should go for a kingston ssd? which model do you use in the x1000?

edit:
ah - i see. SV300S37A

regards...
michael

Last edited by MichaelMerkel on 17-Oct-2015 at 12:53 PM.

_________________
Michael Merkel
(Michael.Merkel@gmx.net Home)
Member of Amiga-Freunde Pfalz, OS4 Welt

@MichaelMerkel

regarding the kingston drives i found that:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7763/an-update-to-kingston-ssdnow-v300-a-switch-to-slower-micron-nand

so maybe it is no good idea to try them

regards...
michael

_________________
Michael Merkel
(Michael.Merkel@gmx.net Home)
Member of Amiga-Freunde Pfalz, OS4 Welt

@Metalheart

How long does it take with your Sam460 + SSD to load the kickstart modules? Should not take more than 4-5 seconds.

@MichaelMerkel

I guess that, in my case it wouldn't really matter too much as I can't boot at all!

Really, I'm hoping to find a solution to let me run my XE.I'm a bit fed up with spending money out just to ruin another HD

_________________
Fred Booth
========================================
A500, A600, A1200 c/w Mediator and 030
AmigaOne and OS4.1
Mac LCII, G4 Powermac running OSX + Amigakit and MorphOS 3.0
Dell Mini 10 Netbook running IcAros and AmigaForever+Amikit+AmigaSys
2006 Macb

@Thread

Is it still the case,then, that I'm going to need an HD anyway?

If so,I may as well just switch to SATA and have done with it.

_________________
Fred Booth
========================================
A500, A600, A1200 c/w Mediator and 030
AmigaOne and OS4.1
Mac LCII, G4 Powermac running OSX + Amigakit and MorphOS 3.0
Dell Mini 10 Netbook running IcAros and AmigaForever+Amikit+AmigaSys
2006 Macb