128GB SSD in your Amiga!

The CF card will soon be a thing of the past... For very little money you can have 128 GB of storage in your Amiga, maybe more, this is still experimental! You will need OS 3.14 or above (3.2/3.9 etc.) for this to work. Also the file format should be PFS3. Please watch the video until the end as all info is vital to getting it running properly.
All parts can be found on Aliexpress
To support me directly, please visit my website and grab yourself a tune or two... lekproductions...

[@oleurgast730]

Actually IDE2SATA is a nice way to connect SlimLine CD/DVD drives to the Amiga. While you can get theese with IDE (and I recommend using theese, as SATA ones do not support analoge audio-out), slim drives do not have a master/slave/cable select jumper. I had no success running those on my Buddha IDE card. I tryed 6 drives. However, using a SATA to IDE adapter and an IDE to 50 pin notebook cd-drive adapter, all exept one (which might simply be defect) worked on my PC. And with an IDE2SATA adapter it worked on the Buddha IDE. While this is realy a chain of adapters and I had to try different ones, this could be nice for A600 and A1200 to add an external CD-drive using eSATA. Also if you have a CDTV with non-repairable CD-Drive, you might add an IDE adapter (or accelerator with IDE)and use a slot-in slim-drive CD drive behind the CD-slot. Wouldn´t work as a CDTV anymore, but at least as an A500 + CD-Drive (+ maybe accelerator and HD). As a side effect: While IDE often is unbuffered in the Amiga, connecting an IDE2SATA solves the cable lenght problem, as SATA is buffered... I have not tryed to use two IDE2SATA-adapters yet, but they have master/slave jumper. So it might work to use one SATA-SSD and one CD-drive. If you have an A600 or A1200, your PCMCIA slot still could be used for networking...

[@davidobrien1176]

going to give this a go for the a4000.. thanks for the video for the information, and ideas of what is new to make the amiga more upgraded

[@StevenJPiper]

Correction: You DO NOT need heatsinks on this type of SSD/adapter, they simply do not run hot enough, ignore that

[@geoffplus1254]

Nice to see the Amiga moving forward again with M2 storage, it would be handy to have the links for sites you used for your parts and maybe a quick tutorial on your simple way of installing PFS3 file system.

[@frederikdafray9768]

Amazing.. Very usefull video :)

[@stanmoonie6508]

What is the card you used? SSD to 44 pin? I have bought several different ones and several different ssd cards nothing boots.

[@MrEnyecz]

M.2 add into an Amiga! And with heatsink. :) One of the most extreme overkills! If not the Amiga, PATA will limit the load on that thing, it will not be even warm. You should not use M.2 either, just buy a cheaper 2.5' SATA ssd, it will be cheaper, and it will not be much bigger than this adaptor.

[@LektroiD]

Heatsinks are not overkill, heat is absolutely an issue during data transfer, the heatsink will also prolong the life of the chips on the drive. SATA drives are too much of a higher current draw, hence lower powered M.2.

[@MrEnyecz]

@@LektroiD This is a contradiction: you say that M.2 SSD eats up less power than 2.5' ones, yet you say that heatsink is necessary for M.2, but there is no heatsink on a 2.5' SSD. More power is heat, so how is that? I think you simply have some misunderstanding. M.2 can be SATA or PCIe. SATA 3.0 has a peak speed of 6Gbps, while PCIe 4.0 x4 has a theoretical speed at a bit below 8GBps (i.e. 64Gbps, which is a bit more...). When an SSD is hit by a massive sustained load, it can get hot, especially the controller chip. If the controller chip is too hot, it throttles, performance drops. If this is continuous, the heat may damage the chip, but definitely not an issue, if it happens rarely. However, this is a phenomenon for high end M.2 SSD-s with 3GBps or more and massive load, like databases, or chia mining or something similar. If you have just a gaming pc, heatsink is not really needed, the sustained load is far not enough. "Gaming" motherboards will still give you a heatsink (for the show), but e.g. for laptops, there is no heatsink again. In our case, you have a ridiculously low load from a retro PC through PATA (i.e. IDE), which is far slower than even SATA 3.0 is. And SATA SSD don't need heatsink in any case. I know that I was not able convince you, because logic has no power, when people have their believes. No problem. But then, please, at least remove the label before putting on the heatsink, because that makes heatsinks less efficient... even in the case when the label is a heatsink already.

[@another3997]

@@MrEnyecz You should stop reading the theory and look at the practical aspects. These are old computers. The inside of an Amiga 600 or 1200 case is somewhat different to your average PC or laptop case. They generally have no active cooling and very poor airflow compared to modern case designs. Localised heat can become a problem, irrespective of the limited transfer speed of the old PATA interface, because there is still a current is running through the chips and capacitors. And that generates heat, which has to go somewhere. If you already have an accelerator and extra memory on board, you are probably already pushing the limits of the Amiga's case to effectively dissipate heat. A heatsink is a sensible precaution.

[@MagicFerret69]

You can get a 128gb micros less size and less heat

[@channel4ferrets]

Flash cards don't like all the read and write actions. SSD will last longer.

[@another3997]

SD cards do not have the complicated wear levelling technology found on an SSD. This is why they are more prone to failure over time. They were never designed to be a permanent replacement for a computer hard drive. But it is hard to beat the low cost and practicality of SD cards in retro computers, where generally you only need really small capacities, and most of your data is likely to be downloaded and safely stored on your modern PC/Mac anyway. ☺️

[@giuseppelavecchia775]

Avrei voluto vederlo in funzione nell'AMIGA

[@naviamiga]

Do you need 128Gb in an Amiga, almost certainly not, should you do it, of course! There is something great seeing those massive numbers in a classic machine.

[@10MARC]

Be careful when you buy an IDE to SATA adapter - several of them do not support PIO 0 and simply won't work on Amiga's IDE. Make sure you get one that supports PIO 0

[@Snowcrash777]

Just had it happen so I went with an M.2 to IDE44pin. I watched your video on that. ;)

[@10MARC]

@@Snowcrash777 I just bought a new IDE to SATA adapter and thankfully this one works fantastic on my Amiga 4000! I put a 120 Gig SATA SSD in the old girl and she works great!

[@sffpv9671]

Is there any speed benefit to running SSD, either in WB load up time or program speed? I run three Amiga's, all with CF/SD hard drives and I've probably never gone over 5% even on an 8GB card. I just can't see what you would need that much storage for? Interesting video though

[@ShieTar_]

If you just run old games,you will never a different. If you have an accelerator to do something modernish, like playing MP3s, or you run CDTV/CD32 games from the disk you may notice a difference. If you actually decide to code your own games on an AMIGA, there definitely is a difference during compiling, at least provided you also have a very decent accelerator to get the CPU speed up. And also when unpacking archive files you can notice a difference. Basically, anytime a large number of smallish files get read and/or written to the disk you amy notice that the CF card gets overwhelmed occassionally, and you will notice a small stutter, even on an AMIGA. BTW, regarding cost it is probably still cheaper to get a IDE->mSATA converter directly, instead of going through two converters. M.2 SATAs probably sold better than mSATA, so there is a bit more future availability there maybe, but for now both are available very cheaply.

[@brufnus]

I started out with a SCSI drive on my CDTV, didn't notice the actual speed but it was not worth bragging about. Now I have an A500 as well, which runs at about 3 MB/sec with it's TF534 accelerator's IDE interface. What really runs fast though, in my experience, is with the Pistorm I've installed in the CDTV. On that one I have about 22 MB/sec now, and it's simply impressive to witness both Workbench and all the folder contents load so fast. 😀

[@martinbrown3152]

I have tried a serbent drive and my machine would not beet with it attached. If I attached it after booting and reset. (don't do this at home!) the drive was recognised. Not all drives / adapters work

[@another3997]

That is par for the course on any retro computer platform, when trying to mate old tech with new. Especially when you're trying to do things as cheaply as possible.

[@stanmoonie6508]

Well Kingston do not work then what one do we buy? I have a samsung 860 evo sata m.2 does not work?

[@NightSprinter]

It has to be an mSATA drive. NVMe drives will not work. The drive must specifically be that type. 22x80mm ones will have two small edge connectors on the sides, and a larger one in the middle.