I know you can get 2.5" hard disk adaptors to 3.5" adaptors, but i would like to attach a desktop hard disk to a laptop ide controller. I have a laptop with a damaged screen and was going to make a custom desktop case for it and use a monitor, as i am making a bigger case i would like to use a faster 3.5" hard disk in it too. any ideas? Imp
Definately possible. I've made up a cable that will work 'both ways' as it were, just a regular 40pin cable spliced to a laptop cable. You could probably use one of those commercial laptop>desktop adaptors the other way round. Just watch out for the pin orientation
Great responce! any idea what the other 4 pins are for on the laptop side of the adaptor? I guess its for the power to the 2.5" hd. Imp
Did you have a problem with the gender of the disks? the controller on the laptop is female, where as the converters i have seen are female 2.5" and male 3.5"? Imp
Ahhh yes, forgot about how laptops are laid out. I was using the cable to hook a regular drive to an Amiga1200, laptop interface but male connector, so a laptop cable plugged straight in. Not sure how you'd plug into a female, don't know if you can get male laptop connectors.
The 4 extra pins are: Pin__Name___Description 41__+5VL____+5 VDC (Logic) 42__+5VM____+5 VDC (Motor) 43__GND_____Ground 44__/TYPE___Type (0=ATA)
Thanks for that update. I hope to purchase the pasrt this weekend and test on sunday, will post my results here. Imp
You'll need to power the hard drive from separate 5 and 12 volt sources. The extra pins on the 44-pin connector aren't enough.
This plugs into the USB; it's a good alternative, no? http://www.usbgeek.com/prod_detail.php?prod_id=0190
thats a good idea... thats what i was gonna suggest... but im not sure if you can boot up with them... so if he does want to boot up with the hard drive its pretty usless IMO
Well sugested, and i did think of this solution....but usb is soooo sloooow and with this being the primary disk it would be tedious. Imp
Urgh, i have just realised somthing...... How would i power a standard desktop hard disk, when all i was hoping to use for power was the native laptop psu. I am going to struggle for a 12v rail to power the hard disk. <edit> suppose i may have to hack a external 3.5" device to usb adaptor to aquire power for the device, such as this Imp
right, i have tempory releaved the problem of 12v rail and am using a standard atx psu to provide power to the 3.3" hd. When i start up the laptop mobo with the 3.5" connected up to the ide cable and powered on, the hd does not spin and the bios does not detect the hd. When i power on the hard disk and then connect the ide cable the hd spins up but on powering the laptop it still does not see the hard disk. I think there may be a small pin out difference in the two types of drive relating to "spin up" which i am looking into. Imp
the harddrive should spin-up if you just plug it in. It doesnt need the ide cable to spin. You just mightbe ether shorting it or you have a faulty harddrive
i saw your post in the laptopHTPC thread. If you don't like the performance of standard laptop drives, hitachi makes 7200rpm 8MB cache ata100 laptop drives. granted, they're fairly expensive, but it's desktop performance in a laptop format. they have 40, 60 and 80GB drives available. they're pretty popular right now, and supplies are limited so they may be hard to find in stock.
