SSD in Creative Zen Xtra?

[cyclone3d]

I've done some searching and haven't come across anybody actually trying this.

I have a 40GB Zen Xtra on it's way and had the thought of using a convertor or two to be able to replace the hdd with an ssd.

I probably won't do it unless the original hdd goes out, but I imagine the battery life on the thing would skyrocket.

From the stock (tested) battery life of about 12.5 hours or so, I would think it would probable at least double.

Thoughts?

 

[Aesma]

Problem is it's a PATA drive inside. PATA SSDs are crappy, rare and expensive.

 

[cyclone3d]

Problem is it's a PATA drive inside. PATA SSDs are crappy, rare and expensive.

And that is why I would be using a PATA to SATA adapter, and then probably a SATA to mSATA adapter.

 

[FnordMan]

And that is why I would be using a PATA to SATA adapter, and then probably a SATA to mSATA adapter.

I rather severely doubt you'll be able to fit all of that inside the case of the thing.

Then there's the whole finding an appropriate adapter for the tiny little 1.8" drive, the only ones i've seen are 1.8 to 3.5" adapters.

 

[cyclone3d]

I rather severely doubt you'll be able to fit all of that inside the case of the thing.

Then there's the whole finding an appropriate adapter for the tiny little 1.8" drive, the only ones i've seen are 1.8 to 3.5" adapters.

The Zen Xtra uses a 2.5" drive. I've already sourced the adapters off of Ebay.

The only real thing I am wondering is if the Zen would actually detect an adapted SSD properly. I would think it should since the pata to sata adapter actually has a controller chip on it.

 

[cyclone3d]

Decided to try using a 44 pin ide to SD card adapter instead. Even lower power and will be plenty fast for playing audio. Plus it is way cheaper than going the SSD route.

 

[draksia]

You might also have good luck with a compact flash to ide, since it basically is ide in a smaller package.

 

[cyclone3d]

You might also have good luck with a compact flash to ide, since it basically is ide in a smaller package.

Yeah, I thought about that as well, but compact flash cards are quite a bit more expensive than SD cards.

Picked up a 64GB microSD card with microSD to SD adapter for a whopping $10. The 2.5" IDE to SD adapters are about $10 shipped, so that is about the cheapest I can try it out for.

If it is not fast enough, I will try something else.

 

[pxc]

You might also have good luck with a compact flash to ide, since it basically is ide in a smaller package.

Was going to suggest that, but was already beaten.

~~~~

Going to flash memory instead of mechanical disc makes sense, but the speed of the media is going to be limited by the interface(s) in the Zen. Internally the IDE interface may very well be operating in something equal to or less than ATA/33 mode, which is perfectly fine for matching the bottleneck of loading data onto the Zen via USB 2.0. (note: if loading data onto the Zen is slower than ~30MB/s, the internal IDE interface is probably running in a slower ATA mode.)

Let's dream and say the Zen uses an ATA/66 or ATA/100 mode interface internally, which it almost certainly doesn't. Faster flash media won't load data onto the device any quicker than the USB 2.0 bottleneck allows (30-something MB/s), and media scanning in the best possible circumstance on the device won't be much faster than slower flash memory device (~30MB/s write) limited by an ATA/33 interface.

And that so far is ignoring what ATA transfer mode the adapter for the flash memory uses. For all we know, it may be stuck in some sucky PIO rate.

It's a good idea, but I wouldn't worry too much about how fast the flash memory is past a certain point. And I would definitely check to see what mode the adapter uses, since a slow mode may be a bottleneck itself.

 

[cyclone3d]

Was going to suggest that, but was already beaten.

It's a good idea, but I wouldn't worry too much about how fast the flash memory is past a certain point. And I would definitely check to see what mode the adapter uses, since a slow mode may be a bottleneck itself.

The adapter I have on the way says it supports PIO, DMA, and UDMA.

No need for it to be faster than 33MB/s since it is USB 2.0.

Pretty sure the hdd that originally came in the Zen would even be able to transfer at 33MB/s, especially since it is not dealing with that large of files.

I will do some testing once I get it, and then test it with the cheapo SD card and adapter to see how much of a difference it makes.

 

[Dreamerbydesign]

I've done some searching and haven't come across anybody actually trying this.

I have a 40GB Zen Xtra on it's way and had the thought of using a convertor or two to be able to replace the hdd with an ssd.

I probably won't do it unless the original hdd goes out, but I imagine the battery life on the thing would skyrocket.

From the stock (tested) battery life of about 12.5 hours or so, I would think it would probable at least double.

Thoughts?

Actually only replacing a HDD with a SSD may slightly increase battery life. Surely would not double battery life.

 

[pxc]

The power savings vs a SSD would mostly be from not spinning up the HDD as it goes in and out of standby/sleep. I'm not sure how much power the adapter's controller uses, but a microSD card should have pretty minimal power draw at the speeds it needs to be read in a PMP.

Another problem with total power usage is that the adapter and microSD card may never reach the lowest power modes in standby/sleep like a HDD would (~100-200mW is typical for a low power 2.5" HDD). I'd be surprised if the battery life went up more than 10-20% while playing a long playlist. Some bigger gains are possible when constantly selecting media manually, since that pattern would wake the HDD more often and prevent the drive from going into lowest power modes.

 

[cyclone3d]

Just looked back at a couple reviews.

#1. It only has 8MB SDRAM. I am guessing that that is the cache. So only a few songs will play between having to spin up the drive again.

#2. The file transfer rate on USB 2.0 only reaches 3-4MB/s when copying MP3s to it.

I will post results once it gets here.

 

[Aesma]

I've got the first HDD portable player ever, the Archos Jukebox 5000, sporting a 5GB 2,5" PATA drive. At some point I upgraded it to a 40GB, but still a PATA HDD. The drive would spin up every couple of minutes so I guess doing that was efficient enough.

I would worry about the legitimacy of a 10$ 64GB card, though.

 

[pxc]

#2. The file transfer rate on USB 2.0 only reaches 3-4MB/s when copying MP3s to it.

With the microSD card, HDD or both? If both, it sounds like the host interface uses one of the slower PIO modes.

 

[cyclone3d]

With the microSD card, HDD or both? If both, it sounds like the host interface uses one of the slower PIO modes.

That was what they were getting in the reviews over USB 2.0 to the Zen Xtra.

As for my little experiment with the SD card and adapter, it didn't work with the 64GB card. Either the Zen Xtra doesn't like it, or the Adapter doesn't like that particular card.

I did test the card and it works fine with an SD card reader on my computer. It is a slow card, but it does work. Only about 7MB/s write, but I wasn't expecting much for $10.

The Zen did detect an old 2GB SD card I had laying around when I used the adapter, so it will at least work with an SD card. I will probably try a few other SD cards I have when I get a chance. If my 32GB card works, I may just order another one of the same brand (Sandisk).

 

[Aesma]

That might be because it's a SDHC/SDXC card.

 

[Sam_Z28]

Did you ever have any success with this? (32GB SDHC card) I'm looking into doing the same thing.

 

[holymackerel87]

Did you ever have any success with this? (32GB SDHC card) I'm looking into doing the same thing.

I know this is ancient, but...
I did have success getting my "ol' reliable" to work with a 64GB SanDisk SDXC. If you're interested in knowing how I did it, let me know.

 

[westrock2000]

Those things are quite thick

My minidisc players might be thinner then that thing.

The best reason to use flash for music is not for bandwidth (music uses hardly any), its for access times. You get no delay between skipping tracks and no spin up upon first use. Just hit play.

 

[srb122]

I know this is ancient, but...
I did have success getting my "ol' reliable" to work with a 64GB SanDisk SDXC. If you're interested in knowing how I did it, let me know.

I'm interested in knowing how you did it. I'm curious about doing it myself with TWO creative nomad jukebox zen's I have laying around that I'm replacing the batteries on as they won't power up. (Not the Xtra, I know, but similar, right?)
I already have a 200GB PATA drive in one of the players that I upgraded a long time ago. I want to experiment with the hardware you used, for the other one.