Apple iPod - Hard drive interfacing (featured on hackaday.com)

View the updated project log on my personal site, XodusTech.com

Project Completion! Quick links to different sections below
-Phase I (Preliminary Mod's, Building drive bay, prepping pcmcia connector)
-Phase II (Soldering Wire to pcmcia connector)
-Mini-Update: Pinouts and data specs
-Phase III (Prepping IDE board, and then soldering to IDE board)
-Mini-Update: Preliminary sizing up of the hd to the front bezel
-Phase IV (Cutting slot in the enclosure)
-Phase V (Adding HD Power and Activity LED's)
-Phase VI (Making eject button, Glory finished project shots)
-Mini-Update: Eject mechanism better explained

I am sorry that all these pictures are taken with my Razr, its the only camera I have.

Original Post:
I have seen someone interface a desktop hd / laptop hd to an ipod and make it work, What I want to do is kind of the opposite. I want to take the hd out of a broken ipod (hd still works) and interface it to the desktop.

Knowing that the cf (compact flash) interface which is what I presume the Ipod uses is IDE compliant it is just a matter of figuring out which pin goes to what and a long and tedious solder job to interface it. Problem I am facing is the hd's 3.3v input vs a more normal 5v, Id like to use a small ide > usb adapter.

I just want to know if anyone is able to locate the datasheets on the hd I pulled from the iPod

Its sticker says:
Toshiba
Disk Drive MK1504GAL
HDD1285 P ZE01 dc 3.3v 500mA


here are some pictures of the slot I have made for it thus far, I canabilized an old pcmcia socket off a laptop. I then removed the pins that did not match up to the interface on the end of the drive. and did some dremeling to get it to go in properly. Just prep work for when I get ready to solder, also the problem of the voltage is troubling me.

Pictures:

These are just constructing the bay I intend to dock the iPod hd with. My aim is to make it hot swap, and removeable so others could be plugged in.


Fully constructed dock bay, showing how the drive slides out.


This shows plastic part with the pins, and then a size comparison up against a 2.5'' laptop hd.


I googled around for hours trying to find the datasheets, and off toshiba's website, with no joy, I am just looking for the exact pinouts for this drive, they are most likely the exact same as a cf card, but better safe than sorry.

 

thats pretty *** kid

 

........you can't write f t w?

 

SO I have decided to move on with this project. I finally found the correct pinout table for this hd, Although its signal compatable with both IDE, ATA, pcmcia and CF, it shares the pin configuration of none of those. So some conversion is in order.

First I was doing some sizing up of the case I may use for this project, its using an enclosure for a 2.5'' laptop hd, and has a ide > usb board inside it which I will be using to interface my socket to usb.

Pictures:

Seems that the whole thing would fit in there with no problem.


Showing the parts that would go inside, as well as the little ide > usb board.


Next was to start the solder process, I had to cut to length strip and tin 50 wires, and then solder them all to the little tiny pins on the old pcmcia socket. Very tedious work.

Pictures:

Stripping and tinning the wires


All wires ready, and then an in progress picture of the soldering, with my iron red hot with soldering goodness..

Finished Product, ready for the solder to the ide board phase:





I would be happy to hear anyones input, very soon I hope to get work done on getting the wires connected to the ide board. and get this baby going.

 

haha thats sick all that soldering, good luck man hope it works

 

dude noice, ima come to FL and gank it from you, pwnt.

 

Am I the only one who didnt understand what you are on about?

 

Here's my input:

As long as you don't know Linux, forget about it...
As far as I remember (I already read about some guy who tried to interface an iPOD HDD to the Computer) these Apple HDDs use a filesystem that Windows doesn't understand.
I think it might be Apples own filesystem, would make sense.
To use the HDD you would need Linux to reformat the HDD.

Btw. You asked about a pinout. Obviously nobody knew it. You found the answer for yourself, so why don't you share it? I mean otherwise this Thread is compleatly useless to other people!

 

Very good point about the pinout, I forgot to include it. Also The file system had not struck me until this moment. However I am not sure if this makes any difference but the ipod works as a mass storage device under windows when you connect it with either usb or firewire. So I assume and may be I do incorrectly that it should already be good to go, there may be some weird apple os spot on the drive, which I can use either linux or some partioning program to clean off.

Unless of course for some weird reason the ipod was able to adapt some weird file system so windows could read it with the use of electronics or some other such way through the ipod (make windows think it can read it, but allow the hd to have some weird format) I am very familar with linux SO I could use it to format and part the drive If it came to that.

Here are the two pinout tables I am using. I am pretty sure they are correct, Unless anyone wants to add anything. I tested the pinouts on my drive and Was able to get the drive to kick on, which must mean the pinout table matches up, The pinouts are for the 40gb drive for the Ipod, but it uses the same connector, and I see no reason why it would not be the same for mine. or for all ipod hd's for that matter.

Pinout tables:


Also here is an image of the pin assignments for the HD:

 

So I went ahead and started to solder the wires I had soldered to the modified pcmcia socket to the converter board for ide to usb, took a while but was able to do it without a hitch. Turns out its basically a direct pin compatability with the ide interface on the board itself, so pin1 on the pcmcia socket (apple hd) to pin 1 on the ide board, and so on, basically i just made the judgement call to go ahead and feed the drive 5v instead of its 3.3v its been running for hours with no issue, I may make a small circuit just to be on the safe side to feed it 3.3v but its not mission critical, I kinda had the feeling it would be happy with the 5v as it seems compatable with the ide (latop side) interface.

So on with the pictures:

These show me desoldering the Laptop IDE connector off the board, and the latter it completely removed. I did this by carefully pulling the plastic peice off the little gold pins, as it would be pretty difficult to desolder 44 wires at the same time, i just did it one by one, I used my torch to melt the solder and they fell right off, took like 5 minutes.


These are in progress shots of soldering the wires from the pcmcia plug to the ide board, and then a shot of all the wires soldered, The few that are left unconnected are the Master / Slave wires, which I later removed, Just were not needed to make it work.


This is where I finally hooked up the usb cable to my computer, Magically it detected the drive and mounted it (really happy)



Now for the proof that It actually did work may any of you be skeptical:

This shows the drive before I formatted it.


And this is the drive after I formatted it.

The interface seems to be extremely fast, for a hd of this physical size, and for something I soldered its quick. Took about 60 seconds to copy a 700meg movie over to it, can't be unsatisfied with that.




So whats next on the adgenda? well, now its time to modify that enclosure I have. I am thinking about cutting a slot in the front of the enclosure to allow you to eject the little drive, I plan on getitng more of these little drives so it could be neat to have them removable. And since its usb its hotswap by nature. Of course the drive should be off when you eject it, nothing a little circuit wont cure.

I would love any input!

 

So, I have begun work on the enclosure, just some preliminary mockups of how I want the drive to be ejected, also how I want the drive to come out of the front of the enclosure.

My plan is to cut a small (pcmcia card) slot for the drive to slip into in the front, and have an ejection switch similar to that of a laptop and its pcmcia socket.

Pictures:

Picture of the front, and then a picture of how the drive looks up against the back of the front peice.

Small mockup of the front:

Dark grey is the ipod HD and socket assembly, Red would be the ejection. Light grey is the actual front peice.


I would appreciate any input or ideas. questions, comments.

 

Did you do anything about it needing 3.3v? or just hook up the 5 and it worked?

 

Glad you asked, I just decided to use 5v, I started at a very low amperage 5v so just in case it was not going to work it wouldnt fry anything. Also what is modding if you are not going to take a few risks. I had ran across somewhere that running it with 5v was just fine. So I guess the added 1.6v is not going to harm it. Though if I find a good easy and small solution to giving it the 3.3v I certainly will, Till that time its 5v.

I have been running it for several hours and its not even warm, I also took the little metal cover that protects the pcb off to make sure it was not getting hot in any spots. It seems it was either designed to handle it, or it just can.

 

Can you not use an LM317 adjustable regulator set for 3.3V?

 

Umm Warrior is my brother...

And wtf this used to be Ipod ho... haha travis, that thing did work with shorting out the battery, but it wouldnt turn on until it was plugged into a power source.. lucky for me there was a computer w/ an ipod cable right next to me

Cheerio, i'll leave you bit-tech people bee.

DON'T GET STABBED BY A STINGRAY LIKE THAT IDIOT IRWIN

 

Dude, not cool...

Nice job on that iPod, but how will it be hot-swap? Its not removeable the way you've soldered it into that enclosure, and USB is already swappable, so whats there to really do? Just wondering what the plan is. Nice job, takes guts to solder so many tiny wires.

 

I could you are right. But I am building this completely out of stuff and parts I already have. That regulator is not one of them. I am going to rummage through my IC collection and see if I cant find something similar to that regulator. But for now All seems well with the hd. no signs of it not liking the 5v.

Tonight or tomorrow I will start cutting the hole in the front of the enclosure. Stil need to figure out the eject part, I can use most of what was already on the socket to eject, I just need to lengthen the bar on the side that was pushed by the old socket's plasic buttons. Ill figure something out though.

In answer to that what I was planning was some sort of locking mechanism, Just so you know the drive slips right out of the pcmcia socket I made for it, you can see that in my above pictures. I was saying for the hot-swap part that It does not require you to shutdown your computer, as an internal IDE interface would, Since its usb , just unplug the enclsure and eject the drive.

Also I may consider figuring a way to cut the power from the usb port. It would shutdown the logic power to the controller on the IDE > USB board, and the drive itself. same thing as unplugging it pretty much.


Thanks in advance for any input.

 

***, travis, now go find more ipod hard drives so you can make a rack of them and raid em together, can you raid usb drives...? beep </doot>

 

Wow, nice idea. /Wish i had a broken iPod.

 

steve irwin was not a ****ing idiot, but you are so **** off