When all the parts were delivered, at first I took the spare back cover and the main chassis from another dead iPod and put the mSATA-ZIF adapter between them.

Also, I ordered some generic mSATA to regular SATA adapter, which unexpectedly played a great role in the whole project.įun fact: 5th generation of iPod has 32 or 64 MB of SDRAM memory (depending on stock HDD capacity), while the ordered SSD has 512 MB of LPDDR3. The last option was the most compelling for me, so I ordered an mSATA to ZIF adapter based on JM20330 chip (you can find it on eBay searching for “zif msata”) and a 250 GB Samsung 850 EVO mSATA SSD (its predecessor, 840 EVO had one of the greatest power characteristics, so it was a good choice).

mSATA SSD with the adapter to ZIF - the least popular option for modding an iPod, but compared to the other options, was the best bang for the buck.

1.8' SSD with ZIF connector - quite a niche thing, which also makes it rather expensive.

SD or CompactFlash adapter with the corresponding memory card - both adapter and large memory card are pricey, but among modding scene, it was the most popular option.

There is a number of available replacements: Hardware modĥth generation of iPods uses 1.8' ZIF HDD, which has an IDE interface with a different shaped connector. Another option was to get a 6/7 generation one with 160 GB HDD, but I wanted to stay with the 5.5th gen unit. The only drawback was storage capacity - mine one had a 30 GB HDD, and although it was possible to find a unit with 80 gigs, it also wouldn’t be sufficient. And as for me, its design is everlasting, a 14 y/o device still feels great and gets a lot of attention. An independent device with locally stored music in lossless quality and decent audio codec was, and still is quite appealing for me. When the whole world was switching to streaming services, I bought an iPod Classic 5.5th generation.

Barbie 2017 Memory for ipod instal