IDE to SD iBook hard drive replacement

[LazarusNine]

So, I've just had a go at replacing a white iBook's (600MHz, 12") hard drive with an SD card using an Amazon-purchased IDE to SD adapter. I've done the CompactFlash to IDE job on a PB Bronze Keyboard (that works splendidly). As the SD card I bought has a decent read/write speed, I thought I'd try this method, as it's much cheaper.

I'm happy to report that it does indeed work, but one thing I wonder is whether the SD card is as happy with simultaneous read/write tasks as the CF card is. From what I can tell, the machine slows down to a crawl if it's transferring a file, say, over USB. I know USB is CPU-intensive, but it got to the point where it was affecting my ability to reliably download a file off the internet while transferring via USB. Or maybe it's just my 600MHz, 640MB RAM machine reminding me not to bother trying to do two things at once! In any case, it seems a bit more pokey than the CF solution on a 400MHz Bronze KB PB.

 

[Elfen]

Which adapter are you using with the SD?

That iBook is a G3 as I remember, and those G3 iBooks only have 1.1/1.0 USB on them and are notoriously slow. But other than that, congrats on the success.

Upgrade to 1GB of RAM on the iBook (if you can) and it should run a little better. Also run OSX 10.3 if you can; OS 9 and OSX 10.0 - 10.2 are slow ad buggy, especially with USB.

 

[LazarusNine]

Yeah. It's definitely USB 1 rather than 2. I was expecting the transfer to be slow, but was a bit surprised when I was attempting to do *anything* else at the same time.

I've got 640MB of RAM in there as that's the cap for that machine. Also, as it's got FireWire, it natively supports OS 10.4. So, I've got that alongside an OS 9.2.2 installation.

 

[Bunsen]

A Firewire + USB hard drive is a definite help with USB 1 or OS 9.x or below.