Clever little hack

[pseudolobster]

I've been thinking about getting an SSD for my laptop for a while now, but I don't think I could live with just 40 or 80gb of space. I currently have a 500gb drive, and even that's not really enough for the amount of movies I like to carry around. It's a 14" laptop, so obviously it doesn't have space for two hard drives.

Today I was looking at a laptop DVD drive, when it occurred to me that it's just a standard SATA connector. I really don't use my optical drive very often, so I figured I'd hollow out a DVD drive and put a hard drive in its shell!

I don't know why I never thought about this before, and I'm surprised I've never seen anything like this available for sale anywhere. I just took a SATA cable and a molex-to-SATA power cable, soldered the wires into the connector, drilled some holes in the bottom of the chassis to mount the drive, and bob's your uncle! It works perfectly!

 

[Crazy Jay]

I know you hate my guts but I have to say that's petty cool man

 

[pseudolobster]

I know you hate my guts but I have to say that's petty cool man

:thanks:

 

[iwannapony]

neat good use of mcguyver-ism

 

[HaloBlu]

Neat & you have lots of extra space in there too! Gotta put something else in there too.

I know you hate my guts but I have to say that's petty cool man

:crackup:

 

[HumanSymphony]

neat good use of mcguyver-ism

"The motherf***er's like MacGyver--no, the motherf***er's better than MacGyver!" - Jason Mewes, Mallrats

 

[FireMyLaser]

Inb4 Kipkay ripping this and calling it the world's fist.



EDIT: did I make it?

 

[HaloBlu]

Nope your too slow kipkay posted a vid 12seconds before you.
But as a consolation prize I'll send you the World's First Full 1W 445nm Keychain laser! Uses only one tiny 10180 Li-ion battery. (runtime per charge ~12sec)

 

[Meatball]

I hope that doesn't absolutely kill your battery life lol.

That's pretty cool man! How much space did you add to your system?

 

[HaloBlu]

Looks like hes got a 250gb hitachi drive in there at the moment. I'm presuming its just for testing before he gets that SSD.
I would be interested on how it affects your battery life as well. Maybe a test would be watching movies from the "DVD" HDD while your OS is still on the other.

 

[iwannapony]

SSDs are nice but wayyyy to expensive for there size. when a 320 gig external can go for $60.

 

[Tech_Junkie]

Nice work. ....taking out my DVD drive now.

Edit: Just a thought. Add a small switch to turn the drive on and off. This way when its on battery, and your not watching movies, no draw.

 

[pseudolobster]

Neat & you have lots of extra space in there too! Gotta put something else in there too.

I get 5v to work with, with no interface to the computer.. Some LED's maybe.. Not much else.

I hope that doesn't absolutely kill your battery life lol.
That's pretty cool man! How much space did you add to your system?

I'm using an old dying 80gb just for testing, but I plan on adding an SSD for my boot drive and using my current 500gb as a storage drive. As for battery life, it'll only be adding the power draw of the SSD which is only like 100mW.

SSDs are nice but wayyyy to expensive for there size. when a 320 gig external can go for $60.

You sir, have never used an SSD. The high price and low space is completely worth it for the speed you get.

Nice work. ....taking out my DVD drive now.

Edit: Just a thought. Add a small switch to turn the drive on and off. This way when its on battery, and your not watching movies, no draw.

Now THAT's an idea! If I wanted to add another mechanical drive, that'd be a must.

 

[jander6442]

nice work... a word of advice be sure not to bump or jar that unit while accessing or
storing to it. Click of death. What brand of SSD is it anyhow? never mind Hitachi got it.

 

[pseudolobster]

nice work... a word of advice be sure not to bump or jar that unit while accessing or
storing to it. Click of death. What brand of SSD is it anyhow? never mind Hitachi got it.

I don't actually have an SSD yet. The drive in the picture was only used to test.. I just grabbed a dead or dying drive out of the pile at work, so in case anything went wrong I wasn't going to fry a good drive. I thought it was an 80gb, but it turns out it's a 250.

I'm going to save up for an SSD one of these days.. It'll probably be an Intel X25-M 80gb.