Apple makes no external hard drive right? wrong. I'm gunna make one. How? custom acrylic Case, USB to IDE adapter, and a fire wire power supply.


------------------------- __________________________
| | | |
| o o | | USB PORT F/W Port |
| | |________________________ |
| |
| |
| | The USB port will serve to connect the hard drive to the
| | computer. The fire wire has enough volts to power the
| | hard drive with a few resistors and such. So, a custom
| | Power adapter inside the case and the IDe plug to a female
| o o | USB. The o's in that drawing are screws to hold the thing
| | Together and will extend through the bottom to act as feet
|------------------------| and have rubber inside to help shock absorb. The case will be
painted white on the inside to match my iBook. and i'll add an
LED and a frosted piece of plastic so that the hard drive can
have an apple too! sweet innit?

That sounds great, but usb is slooooow, even in 2.0 form. FW400 beats it handily and FW800
which I know you cant do, matches up with an inboard disk as far as speed goes. I would just get an
ata-FW adaptor instead.
-maestro

Build your own case...for flexibility go for a USB 2.0 & FW case...then add in a 7200 RPM HD. If you get a 10K drive you might want to get a case that has a fan in it. Aluminum cases look nice and they help with your heat management as well.

Sounds like a great project--if you can pull off an Apple look I'll be very impressed.

believe me, i will. Paint works wonders. any way, i can't do fire wire cuz i don't know the pinout, and i'm doing this with parts i already have. i'll keep yall posted. and i'll make mod guide.

Firewire pinouts here if you want them:

http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_Firewire.html

Instead of using the power from the firewire why not just build a adatper to use the power from the power supply itself?

If you feel like being original, maybe you could rig an ADC external drive. That has power aplenty and USB for data. Not sure if it supports USB 2.0 though....

ADC only supplys USB 1.1 :dry:

macDeviant

Pity. That would have been quite a good mod.