Submitted by keith on Fri, 2007-08-31 04:50
Posted in
With the dropping prices of electronic products, it is likely that any person will have at least two hard disk drives in possession, with at least one of them being redundant. If you were to be using desktop, the additional hard disk drives can be used as secondary drives. Unfortunately, this is not the case for laptops.
If you have a couple of useful hard disk drives stacking up at one corner, why recycle them usefully - create an external IDE drive, connected via USB.
Setting Up An External IDE Hard Disk Drive
- Hard Disk Drive - Have a hard disk drive available. It does not really matter how large the storage is, as long as it is functional.
- IDE Adapter - You will need to buy a USB 2.0 IDE Adapter. Get one that works with IDE 2.5", 3.5" and 5.25" hard disk drives. It is important to ensure that your device is compliant with both USB 2.0 (for up to 480Mps transfer speed) and backward compatible with USB 1.1, supporting plug-and-play. The one that I have supports both hard disk drives as well as optical drives, e.g. CD-RW, DVD-ROM. And the price - merely US$20.
- Power Adapter and Plug - Accompanied in the box are power adaptor and plug. This is to provide additional power to the device, such as optical drives and 5.25" hard disk drives, that require more power. Small hard disk drives, e.g. 2.5" drives, do not need additional power supply.
- IDE Connector - The most important device in the box is the IDE connector. The one below shows that it has two sides, enabling it to connect to different IDE interfaces.
- Connecting Hard Disk - Connect the IDE connector to the hard disk drive as shown.
- Powering up - Next, connect the USB end of the connector to an empty USB port of your computer. This will power up the hard disk drive and negotiate connection with your computer system. (Note: If you are connecting larger drives, e.g. 5.25" drives, that require more power, make sure the power supply is connected first, before the USB port gets connected.
- Working - Once the above steps are done, congratulations! Your external hard disk drive is now set up and acts like an IDE drive.
Now, that is pretty simple! So, all you need to do is to get down to the nearest electronic store and buy a piece of USB IDE connector. But, make sure it is USB 2.0 supported, otherwise the transfer speed will be limited. The total cost, less the external hard disk drive, should NOT be more than US$50.
GOOD IDEA!
Hah nice post! I have been thinking about doing this with my laptop's hard drive for a while but never found an indebth tutorial such as this, thanks for sharing :) A+++
bryan
This is a great way to put
This is a great way to put those old drives to use and save a ton of money on portable storage. This is a great mod for just about any level of experience, great work.
Good way to reuse
This is really a better way to reuse.I always wonder "what to do with the old drives?",it also saves our money.Also it reduces the electronic wastes.Good idea:)
Reuse of old Harddisk drive as ext storage.
Thanks alot for a good suggestion for the use of old harddisk drive. GREAT IDEAL
Would like to hear also what should be the setting for "Jumper 50" on the ext. harddisk.
Be it be set to "Master", "Slave" or "Cable Select"
Cheers,
Jumper Setting 50
Hi Ronald,
The set up here simulates the device as an external hard disk storage. As it is connected directly to the USB drive; in actual fact, it does not matter what you set the jumper setting to, although setting it to "Master" theoretically may help to improve interaction between the connector and the storage drive, but it has not shown any proven test.
Cheers,
Keith
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