Mac mini... mSATA, DOM, SSD upgrades?

[Ninester]

 snip

Oh, re TRIM and GC: One can do without both in the host OS as long as you don't exceed 70% of the physical capacity of the solid-state device, - this applies to SATA SSDs, normal SSDs through adaptors, CF/SD cards in adaptors, etc.)

Via utility? Mines all auto through winders 10 unless I fire up samsung magician. I just leave it auto...hate it when the little things scream.

[FdB]

Skip reading most of all that follows by heeding Hyram’s comments here & above:
“TRIM and GC: One can do without both in the host OS as long as you don't exceed 70% of the physical capacity of the solid-state device, - this applies to SATA SSDs, normal SSDs through adaptors, CF/SD cards in adaptors, etc.”

The Trim support question and this C/net article: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/installing-ssd-on-mac-trim-mistake/ sent me late-night careening off on a rampage to install OS X on a preset partition on the new Zheino. Many hours and much self-inflicted frustration later… finally the realization that the mini ONLY wanted OS X Tiger, sunk in… but not until after I’d completely wiped and reformatted the drive.

Then this morning, I find this simple statement:
To be able to enable TRIM on non-Apple SSD volumes with the trimforce command, the Mac will need a third party SSD,
and to be running either OS X El Capitan 10.11.x or OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 or later versions, the command does not exist
in prior releases of OS X (though earlier versions of OS X can use the third party TRIM Enabler utility).
Which then goes on to explain: TRIM support can be added to all SSD’s running Mac OS X 10.7.2 and 10.6.8 or later.
(Translation: previous OS versions, GO FISH!) G4 Mac mini max MacOS = 10.5.8?

RE: Hyram’s query “Anything else you chaps want to know?”.
Yes, how about running MacBench on that mSATA (if you’ve installed the 9.2.2 hack) that you currently have in your G4 mini?
Not so much for “race results” as it is for comparisons between particular manufacturer’s per-formance (in a leading role).
AND possibly saving others some money and/or headaches with available storage/upgrade choices.

MacBench 3.0 app from: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/2635-macbench-3-0
See Reply #34 (this thread) for MacBench results/comparison.

G’day.

AND, a tip-o-the-hat to IIO’s Tiger “utility”. 
(Mini-hack v.5 still wants to reformat HD set-up by Tiger.)

Rowan Atkinson as Brains? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brains_(Thunderbirds)

[Hyram]

Oh, whoopsy! I posted my bench-chart & pics in the wrong sub! It's over here: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2408.msg31763.html#msg31763

[IIO]

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=4435.0;attach=5328;image

that thing is cute, but do you know the macway minipartner? it is a 3,5" enclosure with firewire (+2) and usb hub (+3) included.

[FdB]

Cute, it is. But I could not beat the price. (It came with the 1.52GHz mini.) The minipartner looks interesting and certainly more bells and whistles... but none currently available (at least not on fleaBay currently).

[FdB]

Guess I’ll need to go back and check the Samsung HD benchmark results with QuickBench
(using Drive Setup 2.1 and Drive Setup 1.9.2 for comparison) against the initial Zheino results.
Like that's going to happen any time soon.

But, attached here is DieHard’s 1Ghz PB (with OWC) QuickBench results next to PT5’s
MacBench 3.0’s applicable numbers plugged into the Quick Bench format… next to my
first QuickBench results (using mini-hack v.5 and Disk Setup 1.9.2).
Initializing with 2.1 seems to yield better results. (See link below.)

Don’t know if PT5 used 1.92 or 2.1 to initialize his Zheino.

Using Drive Setup 2.1 on the mini, produces better read/write results but longer
cold-boot times. Yet, awaiting confirmation of all that from someone else…
I could be wrong (again).

See: http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,2408.msg31783.html#msg31783

AND, thanks for the info and the pics Hyram.

[Protools5LEGuy]

Instead of the CD/DVD you can use this from Ifixit

https://es.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/12-7-mm-PATA-Optical-Bay-PATA-Hard-Drive-Enclosure/IF107-077-1

You can now have two hard drives in your laptop or Mac Mini! By replacing your optical drive, you can install up to a 320 GB hard drive in this enclosure to increase your available storage space. This drive also is available via Target Disk Mode when connected to another Mac using Firewire.

Optical Bay is 12.7 mm tall. Accepts 2.5 inch PATA hard drives up to 9.5 mm in height.

Note: This enclosure does not work with SATA drives or drives taller than 9.5mm.

[madalynmcworm]

What's the TLDR version of this?

I've been using the fancy red adapter that came from ableconn for a while in both of my powerbook G4s. I swapped out my new 250GB samsung for some used 15GB msatas, they seem slower. I used a cheap $12 adapter in a thinkpad, it also seems slow but it is hard to tell as the machine is 366 MHZ and I'm trying to use 100Mb pcmcia on it.

[FdB]

Testing an EZQuest FW400 enclosure (via a 1.5GHz Mac mini) with comparisons
between the original 80GB “Cobra+” 7200RPM IDE drive, a 2.5” 250GB 7200RPM
SATA drive and an OWC 60GB SATA SSD. Compared to earlier 17-11MB read/write
results of an old 10GB VST FW400 drive, this “Chunk” of a FW drive enclosure
smokes the VST.

*Kingwin ADP-06 V1.0 SATA bridge used for SATA drive tests.

Mini recognized only half of the 250GB SATA HD. And Drive Setup 1.9.2 on Mini
would only format it that way. Soooo…

Moved the 250GB, 2.5” SATA HD to a 1GHz Quicksilver with the ADP-06 bridge
and had to add a jumper (see red rectangle, photo below) to the SATA drive to
enable it to be recognized as a “slave drive” and then to be reformatted into
(2) 116GB partitions, which are now recognized on the Mini (with jumper
now removed) in the EZQ enclosure. (DS 1.9.2 also on the Quicksilver.)

Nice! A fairly fast 250GB FW400 external drive for $10.00. (Craigslist cost of
the EZQuest.) Already had everything else as a result of “the virus”.

Should also try Disk Utility 10.5.5 (via OS 10.4.6 on the QS)
to see if that format could further improve performance?

[arnyekveto]

Report: Mac Mini G4 1.25GHz.
I replaced the internal 5400 RPM 40 GB PATA HDD with an mSATA 128 GB card + mSATA-to-IDE case.

Swap went flawless, based on youtube video how to disassemble the mini to reach HDD. The mSATA-to-IDE case have identical dimensions of the original 2,5" HDD, so the swap was easy. There was no jumpers on the old drive and no jumpers applied to the new drive, it just works as it is.

The result is shocking under osx 10.4 xbench disk speed test. Total of  210 xbench points of the mSATA drive.

4k reads (not random) are up to 99 MB/s, this means it is saturating the IDE bus which has hardware limit of 100 MB/s (Ultra ATA/100 standard). It is not just the synthetic test that feels fast, it have the usual feel when you swap HDD with SSD.

Basically the Kingfast mSATA card considered shit in the SSD world due to small file random read/write performance, still it is smoking any IDE-HDD in access time. It is also cheap!

Also, when you got bored of the mac mini, you can reuse the mSATA card, there are external USB 3.0 or USB-c mSATA cases, so you can convert the mSATA card to a nice, small sized external drive.

[torvan]

I wound up going with the OWC IDE/ATA 9.5mm Solid State Drive 128GB myself--I got it fairly cheaply all things considered at $74.99 on sale a month ago. It has worked flawlessly even though I wound up losing three of the "teeth" during the opening process. Loving the speed of the drive really, and it fits perfectly and tightly.

[macStuff]

arnyekveto
cool upgrade

FDB: is that john lithgow? lol

[refinery]

FDB: is that john lithgow? lol

John Lithgow as Lord John Whorfin in the movie The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.
Its a super awesome cheesy as hell 80s flick with a ton of stars before they became big names. Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Dan Hedaya, Christopher Lloyd, Ellen Barkin, Clancy Brown and Jeff Goldblum.
watched it so many times as a kid, i can practically recite it from memory hahaha
"Take her to the Pit! Use-a more-a honey!!! Finda out whata she knows!!!!"

[IIO]

say you would prefer to use 1000 mb or more - and mSATA is more expensive than m2.2280

there are nice 2.5" IDE cases for m2, too.

is there anything speaking against choosing m2 over mSata?

[Protools5LEGuy]

mSATA is almost hogging the ATA 100 or 133 with the usual alternatives.

Using a M2 should be a waste of money if you are just happy with the SATA SSD speed, but to be honest, I would love to see a M2 unit working on PowerPC.

I wish we can help S(ATA)Man to implement NVme with the appropiate bridge on PowerPC.

[IIO]

mSATA is almost hogging the ATA 100 or 133 with the usual alternatives.

Using a M2 should be a waste of money if you are just happy with the SATA SSD speed, but to be honest, I would love to see a M2 unit working on PowerPC.

I wish we can help S(ATA)Man to implement NVme with the appropiate bridge on PowerPC.

the connection type normally doesnt have much to do with the speed - otherwise i of course agree that modern products are faster than required.

it is just that m2 seems the better solution to remain flexible in how you use it, from what i know it is more used than msata.

in an optimal case a product would work in every situation from OS9 over the minis until xserve and firewire cases, and putting such an little card into an 2,5" adapter case will at least solve the mount issues perfectly.

technically it should not make a big difference. what i am mostly aiming at is the price.

example:

https://www.ebay.de/itm/256GB-500GB-1TB-Interne-SSD-Msata-2-5-Zoll-M-2-2280-2242-PCIE-Festplatte-Sata-3/233428207019?hash=item365967c5ab:m:m5n_Ns3I1ZYPmOUOfP7-wMQ

1 TB msata: 170 euro
1 TB m2.2280: 117 euro

they are basically the same product, but look at the price.

i would love to add 6x 2TB SSDs into my main mac next summer and will probably go the cheap china shit route instead of second hand.

[Protools5LEGuy]

You just make me read again https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/post-your-ssd-cf-sata-pata-powerpc-benchmark-results.2063361/ to see if any results about M2 are there...

[Protools5LEGuy]

"Machine: PowerBook G4 17" 1.67GHz DLSD (A1139/PowerBook5,9)
SSD: Dogfish 256GB NGFF m.2 2280 SSD (via IDE-to-m.2 adapter)
Purchased: April 2019
Price: total in USD, $46.44 (CAD$60 + CAD$12)"

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/post-your-ssd-cf-sata-pata-powerpc-benchmark-results.2063361/page-3?post=27294705#post-27294705

"iBook G3 Snow
IDE to M.2 adapter
128GB SanDisk M.2

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/post-your-ssd-cf-sata-pata-powerpc-benchmark-results.2063361/page-3?post=27294705#post-27294705

[IIO]

yeah, the discussion and the options have changed dramatically over the last 4-5 years.

curretnly SSDs are affordable up to 1 TB of size. i am only waiting now for the 2 TB sized media to adapt to the same price level and then i try to fill the quicksilver with SSDs only.

eventually i even "downgrade" the 2-port SATA PCI card for a 4-port ATA 133 card in order to put 8 instead of 6 SSDs right into the machine.

havent tried booting into OS9 from a dogfish yet but otherwise they are great.

[FdB]

I tried.