Samsung 16GB SSD on Gmini402cc

[esuzuki]

Hi,
I recently replaced Toshiba 20GB HDD with samsung 16GB SSD on my Gmini402cc and it's working great!
I don't have to worry about fragile HDD anymore!
I wanted to share what I had to go through in case if you want to challenge this.

If you decide to do this, I recommend to backup EVERYTHING on existing HDD first.
When I had problem with my HDD, I lost wall paper files. I don't mind it, but you may.

I bought Samsung 16GB SSD (Model MCAQE16G8APR-0XA00) at eBay. This is a iPOD compatible (I think up to 4th gen or so) SSD.
This SSD is NOT for replacing ZIF connector HDD.
The SSD is thick (~8mm), so to put it in Gmini402cc, I had to remove metal shell.
Remove 4 screws on the SSD and carefully lift up metal shell with flat head driver. The metal shell is only there to match 8mm HDD thickness. After removing the shell, SDD is just about 5mm thickness. You can see many SRAMs inside.
Next, I put shipping tape (thin clear tape) on SRAM side to avoid shorts with board (SRAM side contacts board on Gmini402cc) and just put it in.
Put battery back and it's ready.
This SSD is pin compatible with HDD and Gmini recognized SSD right away and asked if I want to format.
I re-formatted after connecting to my laptop just in case.

Even capacity is reduced (and it was not cheap - SSD costs about $100), I am glad to have no moving parts.
I restored demo games that I deleted and let my kids play. I don't have to watch how my kids play game now.


Regards,

[roylovelock]

excellent, the last time i saw this attempted was on the av300 where someone put in ssd into one of theirs (no where near 18gb at the time was avalible).
could you post some pics up so we could have a look, my 402 is still running stong atm - the mrs uses it all the time, but its nice to know there are options avalible if they need to be addressed in the future. the 402 is by far the most reliable player ive ever owned - in about 4 years ownership i think its probo crashed about 10 times!
roy

[esuzuki]

How can I post picture?
I'm novice here and I don't know how to...

[esuzuki]

I somehow figure it out how to post picture.


From left to right: Samsung 16G SSD, Toshiba 20G HDD (spare) and Gmini402cc after removing battery.




Samsung SSD (left, 8mm thick) and Toshiba 20G HDD (right, 5mm thick)




Removed metal shell from SDD (left), 16G SSD (center) and Toshiba 20G HDD (right)
Bunch of SRAMs will be facing down toward board on Gmini, so I used shippping tape to cover SRAM to avoid shorts.

[snoutmeat]

I was thinking about doing something similar, but I think there's a different route.

First, this item:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.10886

It's a $5 adapter that connects to a Toshiba 1.8 inch connector and accepts a CompactFlash card.

Then, you could get a 16 or 32 GB CF card in lieu of the hard drive. 32 GB cards are currently running around $75, and a 16 GB is around $39..... so I think I could do the same thing (16 GB) for $45, or increase the capacity to 32 GB for around $80!

[esuzuki]

Thanks snoutmeat for reminding that.

Actually, what you mentioned was my backup plan in case SSD did not work.
I first tried SSD on my laptop (which had 1.8" HDD), and had many issues - Cannot restore from Norton Ghost, couldn't use disk copy tools, etc - so I was worried that SSD I bought was bad. Funny thing is that SSD only worked when I did clean OS installation. I was sweating...

So I bought the exact same adapter (1.8" HDD to CF) at eBay also, but I did not try on Gmini yet because SSD worked on Gmini without any problem.
I don't have large CF card (16G or 32G) yet either. Max CF capacity I have is 512M(!), besides Hitachi 4G micro drive I use on digital camera.
Didn't want to try micro drive - since it defeats my purpose of being worry free from "shaking".

If SSD stopped working, I would definitely try CF adapter.
But if you have a chance to try, I am very interested in the result.

Regards,

[primanocte]

Hi. Does someone tryed this one with the CF Card Adapter?
I will try to do it with a CF Card adapter who can take a SDHC Card. Thats cheaper than a CF Card.
Thanks for some answers!