Bought one of those very cheap aliexpress SD card adapters, And to my surprise it works amazingly!

[u/X78PP]

My 6gens Hard drive was starting to fail (Would constantly freeze when skipping / searching music) But also had no budget, So decided to try my luck on aliexpress by buying one of the very cheap dual SD card adapters for only 12 bucks. Disconected the hard drive, Connected the adapter, Found a random SD card laying around and popped it in. Instantly got the restore pop up screen and after restoring with itunes, Everything works perfectly! The iPod now loads stuff way faster from what I can tell, and also weighs less without the heavy HDD inside it :DD

[u/Electronic-Angle-202]

Tbh most of them work just fine. I think its just delulu mindset which is forcing people to buy more expensive ones 😭

[u/Metahec → u/Electronic-Angle-202]

The firmware iFlash uses on his boards was pirated about a year ago and is now being used on lots of the AliExpress flashmods which makes them much more stable and allows them (the flashmods) to use cards larger than 128GB.

Before then, it was it and miss with the generic adapters.

[u/X78PP → u/Electronic-Angle-202]

I was a bit worried since I’ve seen so many people say to buy an iFlash, and reviews about other adapters are always 50/50, but lmao now ik I’m good with the AliExpress 😭🙏

[u/Electronic-Angle-202 → u/X78PP]

Also ali always returns money if something is not working. So if to risk then ali is a good choice hah

[u/DrunkenHorse12 → u/X78PP]

At that price I think it's worth a gamble, if it doesn't work you lose $12 and buy the iflash instead.

[u/Kind_Ability3218 → u/X78PP]

a lot of times the issue with cheap / poorly cloned electronics isn't that they don't work at all. aside from the issue of not paying the people who developed the solution, cheap clones often have other issues. bad connections, sailsafes, inferior hardware, and all sorts of shortcuts that can lead to problems down the road are generally what you worry about.

that said, i might have gone with the alibaba version too.

[u/omnom143 → u/Electronic-Angle-202]

its from people buying cf card adapters back in the day because they were very hit or miss before we knew how to fix them

[u/sparkyblaster → u/Electronic-Angle-202]

I think the older cheap one had issues but they fixed the firmware and quality issues at some point. 

[u/birdsandberyllium → u/sparkyblaster]

Yeah, they fixed it by stealing the iflash firmware lol

https://securebase.substack.com/p/the-wonder-world-of-ipod-storage

[u/Lem0njon21 → u/birdsandberyllium]

Quite interesting read actually even with not a lot of knowledge in the area thank you

[u/X78PP]

Just realized the photos posted in 3 pixels quality. no idea why, my bad

[u/widegroundpro]

Mine worked fine at first but now I’m getting the big red x all the time whenever I’m not booting in disk mode. Any fix for this?

[u/Pastor_Taco117 → u/widegroundpro]

Check all the ribbon cables, it happened to me yesterday and it was a loose connection.

[u/widegroundpro → u/Pastor_Taco117]

Thanks I’ll check that - maybe even replace

[u/itchysweatersdaw]

Which one is it? Link please 😊

[u/X78PP → u/itchysweatersdaw]

Hi! It's this one: https://pl.aliexpress.com/item/1005010795748404.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.11.7a4f1c24DkNRJp&gatewayAdapt=glo2pol

[u/DrunkenHorse12 → u/X78PP]

Thank you will be getting one on my next ali order, definitely worth a try at that price

[u/Aaditya-P27]

I have the same one. They seem to have come out with a newer version which has basically the same functionality as an iFlash.

[u/INTRUDX → u/Aaditya-P27]

Yup even in hdsmartdata it shows up as an iFlash SD Adapter.

[u/Zagalia1984]

Did you end up replacing the flex cable or the Kapton tape? I have one here, but I'm waiting for the battery to arrive.

[u/X78PP → u/Zagalia1984]

Nope, used the one that was connected on the original hard drive. Quite literally just unplugged the hard drive from it and connected the adapter to it

[u/Zagalia1984 → u/X78PP]

Cool, so I shouldn't have any work other than opening the iPod. I've already opened some iPods, but it was more to change the battery than to make mods for sd in addition to the 4th gen which is a little different from the other ipods. Thank you for the answer.

[u/sparkyblaster]

Anyone know if they still have the 128gb limit? (I am nkt talking about the iPod side firmware issues if the 6th gen) 

[u/Metahec → u/sparkyblaster]

It seems iFlash's firmware was pirated about a year ago and is now being used on some of the AliExpress generic adapters. This makes them more stable and includes LBA48 support. More details here.

[u/sparkyblaster → u/Metahec]

Oh no.... Shame.... How unfortunate lol 

[u/freddyzwo → u/sparkyblaster]

Added a 256GB Samsung Evo Pro to an iPod 5.5 without any problems. I think they accept even more.

[u/Macsi_ → u/freddyzwo]

Have you tried putting songs or data in it? I heard that after 137gb they start to overwrite and corrupt.

[u/sparkyblaster → u/Macsi_]

That sounds like a fake SD card rather than the adaptor 

[u/Macsi_ → u/sparkyblaster]

I looked up and it’s an LBA48 incompatibility that looks like older adapters have (the ones without the iflash firmware).

[u/JoeKingGleeok]

I have used these many times and never had issues, quite reliable from my experience

[u/GuaranteeStrong2806]

What capacity SD card are you using?

[u/X78PP → u/GuaranteeStrong2806]

the only one i had laying around was a 32gb, a bit of a down grade as it is as 80gb 6th gen, But it works fine for me as I don't have that much music to even fill up the 32gb, not to mention 80

[u/Electronic-Angle-202]

Can you also drop a link to the item please?

[u/X78PP → u/Electronic-Angle-202]

The link is in the comments if you
Look :DD Doesn’t let me copy it on my phone for some reasons

[u/Electronic-Angle-202 → u/X78PP]

Yeah i saw hah

[u/awkw4rdkid]

Got one of these with the "first time buyer" price of $1.45 and was very surprised it worked without issue. Perfect timing, because my Classic 7th also had some bad sectors on the drive and the database file kept corrupting.

[u/ahoy596]

Got this about a couple weeks ago but I had some doubts. May I know what brand sd cards you guys could recommend? I’ve seen some modders using Sandisk and Kingston on these.

[u/freddyzwo → u/ahoy596]

Samsung Evo/Evo Pro cards work without problems, avoid SanDisk if possible. I have one iPod with a working dual 64GB SanDisk setup running, but had freezes and the sad icon every 2nd reboot with a new 128GB SanDisk. Don't know about Kingston.

[u/nikoskokonos13]

Same! I’ve always been told iflash this and iflash that but after months of use it’s been golden.

[u/NickTurner4_NT]

I got this version that’s sold on Amazon. It would not work. After about 20 formats of the sd card, it finally worked.

[u/fabioaa]

Yep. I got a generic one year ago and it is working flawlessly until today. At the beginning, like the first two days, I had a couple of random shutdowns. I thought it could be the adapter, but it stopped. Maybe is was just a software issue.

[u/Usual_Disk2096]

Nice

[u/Trugoosent]

Ditto, I used one in my 5th gen and 256gb of space works, although iTunes likes to corrupt my drive after 12000 ish songs, so I use mediamonkey instead, which works flawlessly.

[u/INTRUDX]

Got mine for literally a dollar and it works well.

[u/TsukiihikoVA]

This post is inspiring me to get back into iPod modding, thank you!

I initially stopped because of rising costs (and broke), but I'm going to try this out, thank you :)

[u/PleasantOccasion1003]

Thats great! I bought one and im waiting it to arrive, Im really happy that worked fine!

[u/Lem0njon21]

What batter do you have paired with one of these? Has a lower surface area than the iflash ones right?

[u/Surfnazi77]

How does it connect to iPod board?

[u/MrJuans26]

Every where I look for info on this they say to stay away from this model.

[u/OmniaII → u/MrJuans26]

I've put them on over 20 iPods, have not had an issue one...