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

The 5th Gen iPod's use a different interface for the HD's they are no longer the 1.8'' interface. The HDD's IIRC are about the same size as a microdrive, and they use a small ribbon cable to connect to the iPod. However I would not be at all surprised if they in fact were not ATA as well. After all why should the iPod change the basic interface since its 1st Gen iPod's. If I can get a hold of a broken iPod with this HDD inside I will try to interface with it.

Would you be willing to part with your drive? and do you still have the iPod it goes with?

 

i could part with this hdd, but i live in poland, so shipping would take a while...

it is ata100, 4200rpm, 2mb cache, just different connection and its much thinner, a wee bit bigger than microdrive
also, i'm not sure if this thing works, got it from a friend, don't ahve the ipod that held this thing, the previous owner bought it to replace hdd in his ipod, but lost it, so gave it to me in case i need a replacement for my drive

 

PM me and let me know any details about it. Perhaps we could work something out. I don't mind waiting for a while.

 

I, too, would be interested in learning about the IDE(?) port on the 5G iPods, possibly for future projects.

Past project (No, I didn't register just to link spam):
http://www.command-tab.com/2005/03/13/ipod-super/

That's an awesome enclosure you made, Warrior_Rocker! Soldering all those wires is a chore, isn't it? ;-)

Update:
Here's the best image I could find of a 5G HD, but it sadly doesn't detail the connector. http://media.arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/video-ipod.media/dissection-harddrive2.jpg

 

WOW command-tab, It was the iPod Super that inspired me to try to reverse the whole ordeal. If I had not seen it could be possible to use ATA with the iPod I would have never thought to use the HDD with ATA from the computer end. And with that I feel honored to welcome you to the forums.

Soldering all those wires was indeed a chore of chores. Just prepping all the little pins was hard enough. You get systematic with it eventually and just repeat the same movement over and over and over until it is complete.

Also funny you mention trying to interface the new iPod HDD's I just found what I believe may be the pinouts for it over on the toshiba website, and what a wierd wa to get to their technical data I might add. Data table below, From what I can tell it uses only 40 pins now, and its not pin for pin ATA, though just offset a bit still hackable of course.

Picture:


It may take a little bit more buggering to get the wires soldered onto either the drive, or to the ribbon to the iPod but I am sure it can still be done.

 

Thanks for the kind words I'm glad my project could be of some help for yours!

Except now you'll need a magnifying glass! That connector looks really tiny... I think the best way to do it might be to acquire a dead 5G iPod and make use of the ribbon cable that connects the drive to the board. It will allow for more room than what's on the drive itself, but it's still quite small. From the picture, it looks to be one of those fold-down ribbon cable connectors that you see elsewhere in iPods and laptops, and that's undoubtedly surface mount.

With the right custom PCB and a purchased one of those connectors, it should be possible to make a "breakout" type board so that the tinkering can begin. As the drive has ATA type signals, I would expect that it still speaks ATA, and should be hackable as you said. Finally, I'm sure the iPod firmware would take some fairly serious modification to speak a new protocol -- all the more reason to stick with what works. Just.....smaller.

 

Good idea to try to use a breakout pcb attached via the ribbon. There has to be some way to get it going. If I can get my hands on one of those drives I will try to make heads or tails. Amoung other things the toshiba spec's say its ATA so it must work somehow.

I am going to do a little more digging to find some more info. Breaks out my trusty google

 

If I can find one, I might try to get ahold of a broken 5G iPod on eBay or through a Mac forum member. Then the soldering can really begin!

 

I just the other day saw the section on your site where it was discovered you could use the caddy of an old ibm as a converter for the connector. How odd that it was virtually plug and play minus of course the rewiring for the +5v for the laptop HD. I am currently working on a new project with what remains of my iPod 3g over here: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=121947

 

nice soldering job !!

but you can get that off ebay like you said, just need to search "IDE usb 1.8 toshiba" for 20$

but I was thinking of doing something similar that cannot be found on ebay

to fit a ipod hard drive to a CF slot

imagine a dell axim x50v with 60gb of storage !!
since MK6008GAH (toshiba 1.8" 60gb) can be easily found for 150 to 200$usd
having a way to connect them to any CF slot would let Canon 300D user take photo basically forever, and PDA user with CF slot carry their entire movie collection, and a little case modding and it'll all be self contained !

the reason of my post is just to ask, as it been done before ?
I'm running an old laptop off a CF card, and since you can find adapters that will let MK6008GAH work on ide ports this probably means MK6008GAH will work in a CF slot, and 500mA isn't worse than a 2gb microdrive !

 

shodan, yes I now realize I can buy the same thing for less than 20 on ebay and other various websites. But I had no idea that kind of thing existed and took it upon myself to build it. Since I had never seen it before I just assumed (in this case incorrectly) that nobody made it. Mine is unique though so it has a special feel to it.

In regards to adapting the 1.8'' hdd with a CF slot... Sure it could be done but here are your two problems:

A) Power: Some CF cards use either 5v or 3.3v IIRC (however my drive seemed to tolerate both 5v and 3.3v) and the little toshiba drives take 3.3v. The other power related issue is the amount of amperage available to drive the HDD. Remember that CF cards are solid state and thus have no moving parts and therefore take very little power. The 1.8'' HDD's can take 500ma or maybe even more upon spinup. You would need a way to regulate additonal power to the HDD

B) Size Issues and Interface: DO NOT under any circumstances try to plug a toshiba 1.8'' hdd into a CF slot. I made this mistake and fried two CF slots this way (the pinouts although it will fit are not the same). Also making the interface cable small enough to be useable would be a bit tricky as the new toshiba HDD's use a ribbon cable instead of the pin array like the HDD that I used for this project. The 60gb HDD would be an example of one that uses the ribbon cable. Anything 30gb and above will use the ribbon if memory serves.

C) Getting the HDD to fit: You may run into a problem trying to get a drive that is almost 3x the size to fit anywhere comfortably. Making some sort of tray or way to mount it would be required as these drives can be a little fragile if no thandled right. Notice how in the iPod's they are encased in a rubber housing to prevent it from knocking around.



I hope this helps a bit. But do know this. I would love to see someone do something like this. And infact if I had a device that took CF cards you can be assured I would be building the adapter right now.... Mod on!

 

Hi,

1st, as a fellow hacker, I totally understand why you did your first adapter and why it's great (beside it's possible that the product was not even available at the time, seems like a very new product)

ok about getting a 1.8" toshiba drive to work with a CF card

the device I want to get this to work with is a Dell axim x50v btw
let assume that the power supply is external (at 340mA 3.3 volt, a pair of AA batteries should do) there are other places to get 3.3v in a PDA so that can be worked up later

for the cable you are right
http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Pa...00000000/810000000B0C000000010000659C000026BD
the CF-style connectors "Embedded 80.0GB* 1.8-Inch PMR HDD" are available from 20gb up to 80gb, while the flat ZIF connector drives "Embedded 100.0GB* 1.8-Inch CE PMR HDD" are available from 30gb to 100gb
(although I am not all 100% sure of this)
CE means Consumer Electronics
PMR means perpendicular magnetic recording
http://gprime.net/flash.php/getperpendicular

the flat ribbon connector is a good thing actually
the ribbon is buyable separately, all soldering happens on the ribbon and burnt ribbon doesn't equal dead 200$ hard drive

what I'd do is I'd glue the 1.8 hdd to the back of the PDA, (maybe cut into the battery bay door, lots of empty space in there)

then take a 64mb CF card , split it open , solder the ribbon to the gutted CF card, connect the CF to CE ribbon adapter in the CF slot, connect hard drive to ribbon, hook external psu to 1.8" hdd then pray to $deity, hit power and celebrate if there's no smoke

what'll need
PDA -> got it
disposable CF card -> got it
3.3v external power supply -> got it
Toshiba 1.8" CE PMR HDD (got one but in my ipod, I'll probably get a 60gb , put it in my ipod and install the 30gb in my pda) -> to buy (100-150ish)
soldering iron -> got it but missing masterpiece setting, I only have off and "did I just bridge those two traces?"
couple extra ribbon for CE PMR drives -> to buy (35$)

so to resume
1 get the stuff
2 find the right pin out
3 do it

 

It is refreshing to hear someone do their homework when it comes to a real mod of sorts. So often I hear "how do I make my LED fan spin???!?". I cant wait to see how this turns out and what success you have. Mine took the most patience I had ever had when soldering. (until I tried to solder ram, another long story)


You also may not have to go as far to gut a cf card, although it may prove easier in the end, I would try a modified pcmcia card bus interface. It has the same pin spacing and whatnot and would be great to try without killing a poor cf card. Though the advantage of the cf card would be to keep its original casing so it makes the interface easier to remove if you wanted to.

My recomendation for mounting the HDD is to mount it so that the cylnders are facing inwards into your device, maybe cut a small rectangle to let the drive in a few millimeters. The covering on the other side (at least on mine) for the driver board is fairly robust, dosent seem to be easily damageable. Though I must say, toshiba did a bangup job with making these drives durable. Even though you are never expected to fiddle with them, They are very up to the task. Too bad you didnt see devices use the ones with the CF style interface as a ejectable storage medium.


I really wish the best of luck. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help. Mod on!

 

i have a 30gig ipod hd just like command-tab has a picture of (link above) , and its also a MK3008GAL.. and i was wondering if there was any possible way to use just he hd

 

How to remove all songs from ipod? Im planning to buy a new ipod model but I can't do this unless I have the money to buy the new one. I want to sell my ipod 30gb but has 2000 songs in it. I want to remove them before selling it. Thank you in advance.
__________
punjabi matrimonial

 

They should be in your iTunes library.