I know I’ve been talking about doing this for a while but I finally sat down and did it. I put in a 100GB 5200RPM Toshiba MK1032GAX. Wonderful drive, quiet, good heat dissipation and very power efficient.
Here are some pics (my digicam sucks, sorry):
This was a pretty straight forward mod. I put the tape all over just to make sure nothing got shorted out and to keep any vibration down (which there is NONE anyway because the drive is awesome).
I did the mod for two reasons: #1 60 GB 1.8” drives are overpriced for being small and slow so I left my 40GB in there. #2 my UJ-812 died and I also realized how little I really used an optical device and opted for the second HDD. It’s sweet though. I have my whole music collection (60GB) and some movies, files, etc on the second drive so it’s a portable media center in a very tiny package.
Very creative. Did you just use the same cable from the optical drive to use for the HDD or did you purchase extra parts? If you did, I’m sure other’s would love to know how you did everything.
I bought a 2nd Hitachi IDE cable from nexttronics.com. You just have to fold/bend the cable the right way and it will reach. You also have to modify the metal bracket that was used to hold in the CD-ROM in order to fit the hard drive, but the drive fits in perfect, almost as though it was made for that space.
[quote author=“Mr. B”]That’s awesome… although I’d imagine there are some significant consequences to battery life.
Actually, I have the extended battery and when I am using the second HDD (DJing a party), it only cost me about 30-45 min of battery over before I had the 2nd HDD. Like I said before, its really energy efficient. I did a lot of research before I picked the Toshiba.
Heat is not a problem at all as the second drive is very well designed, thermally. As for putting in a third, it would have to be USB (only two IDE channels) and there wouldn’t be enough room in the back there due to the PCMCIA slot.
Like I said before, having 140GB in your laptop is awesome!
After only looking at yer photos… i was wondering about spining the hdd 90 degrees and sticking another along side it…
So the ide connectors/cables are hardwired to be masters are they? the ide controllers should be std 2 channel types i guess… (as device manager reports…
Is it that the cable needed would have to be one like the 80-conductor ide cables that determine the master is on the end, Cable Select…
Sticking a third in is complete overkill tho aye!
It would be feasable to stick a 160GB 2.5” in next to the new 80GB tosh (vapourware!) so 240GB should be accessable to us real soon!
Shame i use my burner a lot…...............
Next stage mod… make a swappable bay… now that would be a winner!
I don’t think it is possible to put two in there as the way I have mine mounted is the ONLY way to get the cable to reach. The toshiba cable is very short. I used the Hitachi one and that was hard to get to reach even in the current position.
As for maximum hard drive capacity, that would be the new 80GB 1.8” plus a the 160GB Seagate Momentus but you’re talking like $500 for the pair, if not more. Not worth it in my opinion. Drives with the industry’s highest capacity are a rippoff until they are beaten.
Before you guys go buck-wild tearing apart your TRs, you should know that Perpendicular Recording Technology is literally around the corner. By the end of this year, i suspect that you’ll see 1.8” drives in the 120GB range.
Two things… the end of this year is 6 months away and how much you think those drives will be? $400?
However, if anyone is unexperienced, I don’t recommend tearing your computer apart to do this unless you have good backup and can afford to break something. My case was the latter as I have 2.5 TRs So lots of parts.
I am thinking about offering to do this mod but first I need to come up with a clean way to close up the opening left by the lack of the cd-rom door. Stay tuned.
No sorry. It is not possible to boot from a USB hard drive. You can only boot from the internal CD-ROM, Sony USB floppy and Sony Firewire iLink external CD ROM. Just get a hard drive for cheap and fix it. They are out there.
Hi all - was very interested with this idea, and since my optical drive refuses to work anymore thought I’d try this. However, the IDE cable from Nexttronics is a 44 pin male, and the Toshiba HD is a 47 pin male as well. I realised at this point I had ordered the wrong IDE (being the one used for the original 1.75in HD that the TR5 comes with….) so my question is, is there some sort of adapter I could get that could mate these two items, ie. a double female connector?
