Replacing 3.5" harddisk with 2.5" SSD on my SAM460ex

I guess a replacement as in subject is entirely possible. Anybody done that?
How?

@JosDuchIt

I haven't replaced a drive, but when I built my X5000, I installed an SSD.

It's the same as installing any other HDD. Plug the SATA and power cables in. Simple as that. The form factor is smaller, so you might need a 3.5" --> 2.5" bay adapter, but that should be easier to source.

Just be sure NEVER to do a full format of an SSD, always quick format.

As for re-installing software, I'd reformat a Flash Drive with an Amiga filesystem (e.g., SFS2), copy all my Amiga data to it; swap the drive out; boot off the OS 4.1 CD; prep the new drive and copy the data back from the flash drive.

@daveyw

thanks for the advice

@JosDuchIt

Same on a big HD, always quick format.
Slow format was required only on floppies.

I have/use this one on my SAM460ex:

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


No problems so far.

But with this one: KINGSTON SA400S37/240G system doesn't boot from it on my sii3114ide.device pci controller, using internal SAM460 sam460sata.device boots ok.

I replaced mine a few weeks ago with an SSD I'd had lying around for years and not got round to using. Works fine, isn't particularly much quicker though - I guess the limiting factor on a SAM440EP isn't disk speed.

There's also some stuff about TRIM and 4K which we don't support properly which might mean using an SSD is less than optimal.

It occured to me after replying that I assumed you were talking about SSD drives.

You can get an SSD that plugs into a PCIE slot, but AFAIK there's no drivers for these in OS4.

@daveyw
Your last post seems to contradict your first one.
Could you clarify the 2 cases you are considering?

@JosDuchIt

There are two kinds of SSDs you can buy.

The first one I mentioned above has connectors for SATA data and power, ie., exactly the same as a regular hard drive. They are usually 2.5" form factor.

Because the interface is identical, they can be used on any Amiga with a SATA interface.

There's another kind of SSD you can buy. It plugs directly into the PCIE slot, ie, it doesn't use a regular SATA interface and power. It's much smaller, a "card" form factor.

The first kind is a drop-in replacement for a regular Hard Drive, so you can use it with any Amiga with a SATA interface.

The second kind uses a different interface, which I don't believe is compatible with Amiga.

Here's the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-st ... tandard_card_form_factors

@JosDuchIt
Are you going to use an extra SATA card or the sam460ex' internal connector? If you're trying the latter you'll run into guaranteed trouble with certain (most?) SSDs!

The sam460ex' internal SATA controller is extremely picky regarding SSDs. I tried countless devices (some Kingstons, Crucials, Corsairs, SanDisk, you name it) and the only one that worked flawlessly for me turned out to be a Samsung 840 evo (250 GB). Any other I tried either didn't work at all or quickly resulted in corupted data.

My filesystem settings are:
SFS\00
Blocksize: 4096
Buffers: 600
Maxtrans: 0x7FFFFFFF
Mask: 0xFFFFFFFE

Runs rock-stable since ~3.5 years now

@Daytona675x & daveyw & Chris

put together:
- chris had no problem with an old SATA SSD
- daveyw tested a lot of them and only had succes with a Samsung 840 evo (250 GB)
- PCI SSD's are not compatible with Amiga

I bought a SATA SSD 500 GB but a more urgent need had to be taken care of; my wife's laptop (compaq presario CQ71) harddisk died, i replaced it with the SSD and did a clean Window 10 install. Windows 10 got remarkably faster, that is for sure.

I surely will have a try later.

@JosDuchIt
Quote:
Yes - but only if it's about the sam460ex internal SATA.
If you use a dedicated additional PCI SATA card then I suppose pretty much any SSD will do. It's only the built-in SATA which is problematic.

@JosDuchIt

Quote:

Just to clarify - it was Daytona who said this with respect to the SAM. I have only tried one with my X5000, and it worked fine.