Along with leaking batteries and failing capacitors, hard disk drives are one of the common failure points these days in vintage computer systems of all shapes and sizes. My own vintage Mac collection is no exception, so to get ahead of the curve I've spent the last year slowly converting my entire collection of machines from HDDs over to SSDs. My collection includes 19 portables and 14 desktops, most of which are from the later PowerPC (G3 - G5) era. As you might imagine I've learned quite a lot by converting my entire fleet over to SSDs, including a number of cases of "what NOT to do" etc etc.
My intent with this thread is to document my experience - including what worked (and didn't work) for me - and to follow up with updates in the future anytime there's something worth mentioning regarding the outcomes of this project. My goal/hope is that this information will be useful to other vintage Mac collectors and enthusiasts, or at least to my future self. I'd also like to thank @phunguss, @Certificate of Excellence, and others who have been of tremendous assistance with this project here on TinkerDifferent.
Listed below are the solutions I used, grouped by interface/drive type. If you're interested in the specific details for a particular machine, links to each machine are listed at the beginning of the sections.
A few disclaimers:
*The methods, products, and outcomes described in this thread are NOT a guarantee that you'll have the same result if you apply them to your own machine - RESULTS MAY VARY based on many factors including model, processor speed, etc.
*This thread includes recommendations and examples of what worked for me; opinions and preferences are subjective and you may choose to take a different approach than I did.
*I generally use my machines for CASUAL (not intensive) computing, so SSD performance was not a major factor in my decision-making.
*I generally steered clear of preassembled drives (e.g., KingSpec brand) due to concerns about their reliability - see elsewhere on the Internet for more on this.
*If you're reading this years from now, links to products etc. are not guaranteed to work.
Lastly - Please feel free to comment on this thread if you have something worth sharing related to this topic!
____________________________________________________
2.5" IDE / PATA
Systems Include: iBook G3 (Tangerine, Blueberry, Indigo, Key Lime, Graphite/366, Graphite/466, Snow - 12", 14"); iBook G4 (12", 14"); PowerBook G3 (Wallstreet, PDQ, Lombard, Pismo); PowerBook G4 (Titanium; Aluminum - 12", 15", 17"); Mac mini G4, Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh
This was the largest single subgroup in my personal collection (20 machines total). For most of these I chose to use various sizes of Transcend mSATA SSDs inside of these white ChenYang mSATA-to-IDE 2.5" adapters. I found that these fit well inside the iBook and PowerBook enclosures and seem to perform decently well.
Above: example drive (64 GB Transcend SSD inside ChenYang 2.5" mSATA-to-IDE adapter housing); drive installed in Key Lime iBook G3 (original HDD at left)
For a few machines I opted to go the route of a Compact Flash (CF) adapter instead, mostly just to try it out. CF uses the IDE interface natively, so this just requires a simple passive adapter that's very cheap.
I've heard, however, that these can be somewhat less reliable in the long term than mSATA-based solutions, so I only used this method in a few cases.
Above: 32GB SanDisk CF card and 2.5" IDE adapter
Challenges and Notes
The only system that posed a substantial challenge to get working was my 14" iBook G3 Snow. For some reason I was never able to get the mSATA solution listed above to work - the OS would install but the machine would freeze or crash while booting. My suspicion is that it's something to do with jumper settings, as the optical and hard drives share an IDE cable and controller in this machine. I eventually got one of the CF adapters set up successfully. I plan to revisit this sometime and see if some additional fiddling will help but for now the CF adapter is working well.
Above: CF-to-IDE adapter installed in 14" iBook G3 'Snow' (original HDD at left)
3.5" IDE / PATA
Systems Include: iMac G3 (slot-loading); iMac G4 (15", 17", 20"); Power Mac G3 (Blue & White); Power Mac G4 (Cube, Graphite, Quicksilver, Mirrored Drive Doors)
For these systems I generally used various sizes of Transcend mSATA SSDs inside of 2.5" mSATA-to-SATA adapter housings with 3.5" IDE-to-SATA adapters. For most of these systems this was a plug-and-play solution, with two exceptions that are listed below. For most of the towers I opted to simply mount the SSD to the top of the existing drives since there was plenty of space and no need to physically remove them.
I will note that my G4 Cube came with an SSD already installed by the original owner; he just used one of the red Startech adapters with a premade SSD. That solution has been tested-working for 5+ years now.
I'll also note that I currently do NOT have an eMac or a *tray-loading* iMac G3 in my collection, so I can't offer insight for those machines.
Above: example drive (128 GB Transcend SSD inside mSATA-to-SATA adapter housing with 3.5" IDE-to-SATA adapter); drive installed in Power Mac G4
Challenges and Notes
I found that there are fairly substantial internal differences between the sizes/models of iMac G4s, one of which is that the 15" has a single IDE controller/cable whereas the 17" and 20" use dual controllers and separate cables. This means that the SSD in the 15" has to be set to Master (the optical drive is Slave), whereas the others require the drive to be set to Cable Select mode.
Above: SSD installed in iMac G4 (20") drive bracket
For the iMac G3 (at least the slot-loading models like mine), the 3.5" IDE-to-SATA adapter MUST have a master/slave jumper and the drive has to be set to "master" or it won't work. Shown below is the adapter I used and how I mounted it; the red Startech boards should also work.
Above: master/slave jumper on adapter board; drive installed in iMac G3 SL
However, *by far* the biggest PITA to get working was the Blue & White Power Mac G3. I spent several weeks troubleshooting this with some help here on TinkerDifferent, the details of which can be found in this thread. In short, this machine has numerous quirks with its IDE bus/controllers and is a real pain to work with, and many of the 3.5" IDE adapters on the market did NOT work with this machine. The TL;DR is that you should use the red Startech IDE adapter, as this seemed to be the only model that did.
Above: 64GB Transcend mSATA SSD inside 2.5" mSATA-to-SATA adapter housing with red Startech IDE adapter; drive installed in Power Mac G3 B&W
3.5" SATA
Systems Include: iMac G5 (17", 20"); Power Mac G5
These systems were all fairly straightforward to convert to SSD since they already use the SATA interface natively. For all of these I used a 250 GB mSATA SSD (I tried out some Dogfish brand drives this time) inside a 2.5” mSATA-to-SATA adapter housing and a 2.5” to 3.5” SATA adapter enclosure.
For the Power Mac G5 it was easy enough to install the original HDD mounting screws into the 3.5" adapter enclosure and slide it inside the machine like any other drive.
Above: 250GB Dogfish mSATA SSD inside mSATA-to-SATA adapter enclosure; drive installed in iSight 20" iMac G5 (original HDD at left)
My intent with this thread is to document my experience - including what worked (and didn't work) for me - and to follow up with updates in the future anytime there's something worth mentioning regarding the outcomes of this project. My goal/hope is that this information will be useful to other vintage Mac collectors and enthusiasts, or at least to my future self. I'd also like to thank @phunguss, @Certificate of Excellence, and others who have been of tremendous assistance with this project here on TinkerDifferent.
Listed below are the solutions I used, grouped by interface/drive type. If you're interested in the specific details for a particular machine, links to each machine are listed at the beginning of the sections.
A few disclaimers:
*The methods, products, and outcomes described in this thread are NOT a guarantee that you'll have the same result if you apply them to your own machine - RESULTS MAY VARY based on many factors including model, processor speed, etc.
*This thread includes recommendations and examples of what worked for me; opinions and preferences are subjective and you may choose to take a different approach than I did.
*I generally use my machines for CASUAL (not intensive) computing, so SSD performance was not a major factor in my decision-making.
*I generally steered clear of preassembled drives (e.g., KingSpec brand) due to concerns about their reliability - see elsewhere on the Internet for more on this.
*If you're reading this years from now, links to products etc. are not guaranteed to work.
Lastly - Please feel free to comment on this thread if you have something worth sharing related to this topic!
____________________________________________________
2.5" IDE / PATA
Systems Include: iBook G3 (Tangerine, Blueberry, Indigo, Key Lime, Graphite/366, Graphite/466, Snow - 12", 14"); iBook G4 (12", 14"); PowerBook G3 (Wallstreet, PDQ, Lombard, Pismo); PowerBook G4 (Titanium; Aluminum - 12", 15", 17"); Mac mini G4, Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh
This was the largest single subgroup in my personal collection (20 machines total). For most of these I chose to use various sizes of Transcend mSATA SSDs inside of these white ChenYang mSATA-to-IDE 2.5" adapters. I found that these fit well inside the iBook and PowerBook enclosures and seem to perform decently well.
Above: example drive (64 GB Transcend SSD inside ChenYang 2.5" mSATA-to-IDE adapter housing); drive installed in Key Lime iBook G3 (original HDD at left)
For a few machines I opted to go the route of a Compact Flash (CF) adapter instead, mostly just to try it out. CF uses the IDE interface natively, so this just requires a simple passive adapter that's very cheap.
I've heard, however, that these can be somewhat less reliable in the long term than mSATA-based solutions, so I only used this method in a few cases.
Above: 32GB SanDisk CF card and 2.5" IDE adapter
Challenges and Notes
The only system that posed a substantial challenge to get working was my 14" iBook G3 Snow. For some reason I was never able to get the mSATA solution listed above to work - the OS would install but the machine would freeze or crash while booting. My suspicion is that it's something to do with jumper settings, as the optical and hard drives share an IDE cable and controller in this machine. I eventually got one of the CF adapters set up successfully. I plan to revisit this sometime and see if some additional fiddling will help but for now the CF adapter is working well.
Above: CF-to-IDE adapter installed in 14" iBook G3 'Snow' (original HDD at left)
3.5" IDE / PATA
Systems Include: iMac G3 (slot-loading); iMac G4 (15", 17", 20"); Power Mac G3 (Blue & White); Power Mac G4 (Cube, Graphite, Quicksilver, Mirrored Drive Doors)
For these systems I generally used various sizes of Transcend mSATA SSDs inside of 2.5" mSATA-to-SATA adapter housings with 3.5" IDE-to-SATA adapters. For most of these systems this was a plug-and-play solution, with two exceptions that are listed below. For most of the towers I opted to simply mount the SSD to the top of the existing drives since there was plenty of space and no need to physically remove them.
I will note that my G4 Cube came with an SSD already installed by the original owner; he just used one of the red Startech adapters with a premade SSD. That solution has been tested-working for 5+ years now.
I'll also note that I currently do NOT have an eMac or a *tray-loading* iMac G3 in my collection, so I can't offer insight for those machines.
Above: example drive (128 GB Transcend SSD inside mSATA-to-SATA adapter housing with 3.5" IDE-to-SATA adapter); drive installed in Power Mac G4
Challenges and Notes
I found that there are fairly substantial internal differences between the sizes/models of iMac G4s, one of which is that the 15" has a single IDE controller/cable whereas the 17" and 20" use dual controllers and separate cables. This means that the SSD in the 15" has to be set to Master (the optical drive is Slave), whereas the others require the drive to be set to Cable Select mode.
Above: SSD installed in iMac G4 (20") drive bracket
For the iMac G3 (at least the slot-loading models like mine), the 3.5" IDE-to-SATA adapter MUST have a master/slave jumper and the drive has to be set to "master" or it won't work. Shown below is the adapter I used and how I mounted it; the red Startech boards should also work.
Above: master/slave jumper on adapter board; drive installed in iMac G3 SL
However, *by far* the biggest PITA to get working was the Blue & White Power Mac G3. I spent several weeks troubleshooting this with some help here on TinkerDifferent, the details of which can be found in this thread. In short, this machine has numerous quirks with its IDE bus/controllers and is a real pain to work with, and many of the 3.5" IDE adapters on the market did NOT work with this machine. The TL;DR is that you should use the red Startech IDE adapter, as this seemed to be the only model that did.
Above: 64GB Transcend mSATA SSD inside 2.5" mSATA-to-SATA adapter housing with red Startech IDE adapter; drive installed in Power Mac G3 B&W
3.5" SATA
Systems Include: iMac G5 (17", 20"); Power Mac G5
These systems were all fairly straightforward to convert to SSD since they already use the SATA interface natively. For all of these I used a 250 GB mSATA SSD (I tried out some Dogfish brand drives this time) inside a 2.5” mSATA-to-SATA adapter housing and a 2.5” to 3.5” SATA adapter enclosure.
For the Power Mac G5 it was easy enough to install the original HDD mounting screws into the 3.5" adapter enclosure and slide it inside the machine like any other drive.
Above: 250GB Dogfish mSATA SSD inside mSATA-to-SATA adapter enclosure; drive installed in iSight 20" iMac G5 (original HDD at left)
