SSD on eMac troubleshooting

[gastypm]

Hi everyone! I’m new here and I’m reaching for help since I couldn’t find anything on the web nor in this forum.

I have an eMac (the one from early 2003) and it hard drive died. Instead of replacing it with another hard drive, I thought it would be better if I replaced it with an SSD. I bought a 240gb Kingston SSD and a IDE to SATA converter. I disassembled the eMac, replaced the hard drive with the SSD and run a Mac OS X Tiger install DVD I had. The SSD is picked up, recognized and everything is running great.

The problem starts at the installation. Somehow, it gets stuck in the middle of the process and won’t go any further. The weird thing is that it doesn’t stuck always in the same place. Sometimes it gets stuck at the beginning of the setup, sometimes when it’s finishing up. I thought that there may be something I’m skipping that is not working, but, from what I found online, nobody talks about this.

I would much appreciate if any of you has any experience on this so I can solve this out and keep this on the forum for other people running the same problem.

Thanks!

 

[eyoungren]

There are a couple of things that might be the issue.

It's sort of a known thing around here that the IDE-SSD adapters with the green logicboards are finicky. Some have no problems with them, a lot do. There's an adapter (made by StarTech I think) that has a red logicboard. Those are considered to be more reliable, although that isn't guaranteed.

If we can rule out the adapter then it might be your media. Where did you get it and how did you make the disk (if you burned one)?

Lastly and highly unlikely, you damaged something when you took the Mac apart.

An alternative might be trying to install OS X from another Mac using Target Disk Mode. But if the adapter is the culprit that will show up sooner or later.

EDIT (01/08/2021): to change Startac to StarTech.

 

[gastypm]

There are a couple of things that might be the issue.

It's sort of a known thing around here that the IDE-SSD adapters with the green logicboards are finicky. Some have no problems with them, a lot do. There's an adapter (made by Startac I think) that has a red logicboard. Those are considered to be more reliable, although that isn't guaranteed.

If we can rule out the adapter then it might be your media. Where did you get it and how did you make the disk (if you burned one)?

Lastly and highly unlikely, you damaged something when you took the Mac apart.

An alternative might be trying to install OS X from another Mac using Target Disk Mode. But if the adapter is the culprit that will show up sooner or later.

Thanks for the reply!

Yes, I’ve been using one of the adapters with the green logic board. I believe that might be the problem.

I burned a disk with an image of Mac OS X Tiger. I’m going to try with a different one.

I also thought that I might have broke something when I took it apart but, like you said, seems unlikely.

Again, thanks for your reply. I’ll try to get my hands on one of those red adapters and give it a try.

 

[Project Alice]

I’ve been mulling around myself about getting an SSD into my eMac. The HDD is failing. I just keep putting it off because the eMac looks about as easy to open up as a 12” powerbook.

I also have one of the green adapters sitting a drawer, I didn’t realize they were known to be problematic. I got it for an iMac G3, which are super easy to open.
Perhaps there is another route, as I do not want to open up the eMac more than is required. Maybe one of the mSATA adapters we all use on our PowerBooks, in conjunction with a 2.5” to 3.5” IDE adapter?

Edit: I searched startech’s website to find such a device but found this instead. https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/ide2sat2
I thought it was discontinued, apparently not.

 

[eyoungren]

I’ve been mulling around myself about getting an SSD into my eMac. The HDD is failing. I just keep putting it off because the eMac looks about as easy to open up as a 12” powerbook.

I also have one of the green adapters sitting a drawer, I didn’t realize they were known to be problematic. I got it for an iMac G3, which are super easy to open.
Perhaps there is another route, as I do not want to open up the eMac more than is required. Maybe one of the mSATA adapters we all use on our PowerBooks, in conjunction with a 2.5” to 3.5” IDE adapter?

Edit: I searched startech’s website to find such a device but found this instead. https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/ide2sat2
I thought it was discontinued, apparently not.

One other option if you really don't want to open the eMac is to get a Firewire HD enclosure, clone the OS to that (you'll need to get a drive for it) and then use that to boot from. Or you could get one of those multi connector adapters that let you plug in multiple drive types. Not sure if those are FW though.

With a SATA FW enclosure though you could drop in an SSD.

 

[Project Alice]

One other option if you really don't want to open the eMac is to get a Firewire HD enclosure, clone the OS to that (you'll need to get a drive for it) and then use that to boot from. Or you could get one of those multi connector adapters that let you plug in multiple drive types. Not sure if those are FW though.

With a SATA FW enclosure though you could drop in an SSD.

Yeah but FW400 is slower than ATA100. I use it like that sometimes if it’s acting up. But it’s only a temporary solution. If it had FW800 I could get away with that. I’ll just end up opening the damn thing up, just one of those things I’ve been putting off.
Do you know if the 1Ghz “ATI Graphics” eMac has LBA48 bit addressing? (Or in another words does it support drives over 128GB?)

 

[eyoungren]

Do you know if the 1Ghz “ATI Graphics” eMac has LBA48 bit addressing? (Or in another words does it support drives over 128GB?)

No, I do not.

However, my 17" PB was sold starting in March 2003 and it supports large drives. Your eMac started selling in May 2003.

For whatever that is worth.

 

[z970]

@Project Alice As someone who has disassembled both on multiple occasions, I'll take the eMac any day. Sometimes the bigger objects and larger surface area just makes that much of a difference in repairability...

 

[Project Alice]

No, I do not.

However, my 17" PB was sold starting in March 2003 and it supports large drives. Your eMac started selling in May 2003.

For whatever that is worth.

Well LEM has it listed as compatible with big drives so it probably does. For some reason I thought it was older than 2003.

@Project Alice As someone who has disassembled both on multiple occasions, I'll take the eMac any day. Sometimes the bigger objects and larger surface area just makes that much of a difference in repairability...

That makes me feel a bit better. I put an SSD in my 12” iBook G4 two years ago, and it failed about 2 hours later (or at least the adapter failed) I still haven’t worked up the energy to open it back up lol

 

[TheShortTimer]

From my experience with my QuickSilver and iMac G3 - machines from different Mac generations, the SATA to IDE converters with a red PCB and the Marvell 88sa8052 chipset will be fine. As I've stated elsewhere, I have one connected to an SSD in my iMac and a couple in my QuickSilver - with one connected to an SSD and the other to a SATA HDD without any issue.

 

[Project Alice]

From my experience with my QuickSilver and iMac G3 - machines from different Mac generations, the SATA to IDE converters with a red PCB and the Marvell 88sa8052 chipset will be fine. As I've stated elsewhere, I have one connected to an SSD in my iMac and a couple in my QuickSilver - with one connected to an SSD and the other to a SATA HDD without any issue.

I just use a PCI card in tower macs. I have a SATA card in my MDD and an ATA133 card in my B&W and Beige tower. If only the AIO’s were so simple.

 

[TheShortTimer]

I just use a PCI card in tower macs. I have a SATA card in my MDD and an ATA133 card in my B&W and Beige tower.

Do you use OS 9 on the MDD and B&W? I went with the adapters in the tower Mac because I'd read that the Silicon Image 3112 will work with OS X but not OS 9.

If only the AIO’s were so simple.

Dismantling the iMac to remove the HDD was a cakewalk compared to what I've seen in videos regarding the eMac. I can't see myself wanting to tackle that unless its HDD fails! ? ?

 

[Project Alice]

Do you use OS 9 on the MDD and B&W? I went with the adapters in the tower Mac because I'd read that the Silicon Image 3112 will work with OS X but not OS 9.


Dismantling the iMac to remove the HDD was a cakewalk compared to what I've seen in videos regarding the eMac. I can't see myself wanting to tackle that unless its HDD fails! ? ?

No, actually both those Macs don’t run OS 9 at all. The MDD had the SATA card which as you know doesn’t work in OS 9. The B&W has an ATA133 card in it but it had a Geforce 5200 card in it, which also doesn’t work in OS 9.
I have plenty of machines that work good for OS 9. My go-tos are my 1Ghz TiBook and eMac so losing OS 9 and getting better OS X support is a no brainer for me.

And yeah, I saw the ifixit guide on the emac which is why I’ve been putting it off lol

 

[gastypm]

Update on this:

I was able to get my hands on one of the StarTech's IDE to SATA adapter (the red one) and installed it a few minutes ago. Now I'm installing Mac OS X Tiger and everything seems to be OK.

I'll update this post later with more news and if I succeeded.

 

[gastypm]

Success!​

I was able to make it work with the StarTech IDE to SATA adapter! Thanks to @eyoungren for the suggestion. If you are going to replace your HDD with an SSD on a PPC Mac, I totally recommend the StarTech adapter (remember, the red one) over the generic green one that you can find on some places.

I've successfully installed a 240gb Kingston SSD on my 2003 eMac and it works great! I know it is bottlenecked, but the change in speed is really noticeable, and I won't have to worry about reliability issues.

 

[eyoungren]

Success!​

I was able to make it work with the StarTech IDE to SATA adapter! Thanks to @eyoungren for the suggestion. If you are going to replace your HDD with an SSD on a PPC Mac, I totally recommend the StarTech adapter (remember, the red one) over the generic green one that you can find on some places.

I've successfully installed a 240gb Kingston SSD on my 2003 eMac and it works great! I know it is bottlenecked, but the change in speed is really noticeable, and I won't have to worry about reliability issues.

Glad it's working. Green over red I guess. I think that goes the same for 2.5" mSATA enclosures as well.

I bought the basic less than $10 adapter with the green board for my 17" PowerBook. Didn't work, although it does work for a lot of people here. Went and got an Addonics adapter (which has a red board) and that worked perfect. Cost a little more, but I know it will last.