New Mod Dock to ad Hard Drive

[deathspal]

DeathsPal's Total HDD MOD

Originally based on the hardcore mod in the ux wiki http://micropctalk.wetpaint.com/page...Drive+dock+mod

I took it a few steps further to make it cleaner.

I used this adapter from Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...00_i00_details

and a USB cap/plug to block accidental usage of the USB port used in this project...

all our parts



inside usb to Sata




carefully pry out PCB




remove clear plastic guide from top and screws from bottom of dock




gently lift out bottom cover




break out the plastic cross members in the bottom cover.




and clean up as best you (can no one will see it) a dremel is best but you can do this with a knife




take out the screws now showing on the bottom after removing the bottom plate.




and gently pry out the mid body, this may be a little tough a splunger is recommended if you have one...




pry the RF shield off of the mid body by lifting the metal tabs




Continued....

[deathspal]

the mid body should now look like this...




Cut the mid body inside the outer screw blocks (Again a dremel works best.)




so that it looks like this




cut the USB cable that came with the USB to SATA so that you have a part like this.




carefully cut the the shielding off of the USB connector using an exacto or similar small knife.




it should now look like this.




pry the strain relief cut it off of the shielding from around the connector.




now strip and tin the wires at the other end of this cable.




now locate the area on the board (Still in the Dock) and attach the USB cable as shown. (Please note the direction the wire are coming off the board as this will make it easier to fit back in the dock later.) *** also the wire order *** from left to right is Ground, Black, Green, White , and RED




ALMOST there!!!
Continued.....

[deathspal]

make this additional notch in the mid body for cable routing... (Replace the screws that still have holes)




Place the Mid body back in the dock with the USB cable routed as shown.




connect the USB to SATA adapter to your laptop drive and connect it to the USB cable.




place the bottom back on the the dock. it will be snug but everything should fit...




Enjoy!

-DeathsPal

[DSD]

do you know how to resize pictures and insert previews?

[deathspal]

no Actually I don't, I could re-size the source pictures, but felt the detail level was important...

[DSD]

Originally Posted by deathspal

no Actually I don't, I could re-size the source pictures, but felt the detail level was important...

usually you should make both preview and full pictures, upload them to hostplace and wrote something like this in your post:

[URL="http://imagehost.com/path_to_full_picture.jpg"]
[IMG]http://imagehost.com/path_to_preview_picture.jpg[/IMG]
[/URL]

this will display the preview picture and allow to click on it to open full picture in new window.

[deathspal]

re-sized to for better formatting will ad links to larger images when I get a chance

[DSD]

Originally Posted by deathspal

re-sized to for better formatting will ad links to larger images when I get a chance

it's much better, but may be better more.. )))
just for sample:



preview image is resized to 320px width. and if you click on it, full-sized image will be opened in new browser window.

and the code of this picture:

[URL="http://cs.loving.ru/to_micropctalk/intel_ssd_upgrade/IMG_1324.JPG"]
[IMG]http://cs.loving.ru/to_micropctalk/intel_ssd_upgrade/tmb/IMG_1324.JPG[/IMG]
[/URL]

where first image url is an url for full-sized picture, and second one - for thumbnail resized to width 320px.
The semantics is: we placing the preview image with IMG tag:

[IMG]http://cs.loving.ru/to_micropctalk/intel_ssd_upgrade/tmb/IMG_1324.JPG[/IMG]

and wrap it inside of URL tag which will open full picture when our preview image clicked.

so as I see your first picture on your first post now looks like this:

all our parts
[URL="http://www.nd.edu/~alemmon2/Picts/ux490n/ux490n/IMG_1301.JPG"]http://www.nd.edu/~alemmon2/Picts/ux490n/ux490n/IMG_1301.JPG[/URL]
[IMG]http://www.nd.edu/~alemmon2/Picts/ux490n/ux490n/tn/IMG_1301.jpg[/IMG]

but it should be:

all our parts
[URL="http://www.nd.edu/~alemmon2/Picts/ux490n/ux490n/IMG_1301.JPG"]
[IMG]http://www.nd.edu/~alemmon2/Picts/ux490n/ux490n/tn/IMG_1301.jpg[/IMG]
[/URL]

and I think you should make the thumbnails no more than 400 pixels width, becouse it should eat the traffic as low as it can. your current resized pictures has all needed detalisation(larger versions not needed at all), but when any user opening this thread, his browser should load all these images and if user browsing from mobile device - this post will eat his money.

take a look on my post which has an first sample picture in this text: http://www.micropctalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9600
it has 320px width previews. users who reading it can see all of the pictures without long loading and waiting, but anybody can just click on the concrete picture to view it in full size if interested.

I think it is good practice to format posts by this way. These square bracket codes called BBCODE(Bulletin Board CODE) and used on most internet forum boards. So it is helpful to know how it's working.

Good luck.

[deathspal]

ok Done, and Done.....

[DSD]

Originally Posted by deathspal

ok Done, and Done.....

excellent!!! now this is nice post with nice and helpful mod.
thank you! ))))

P.S. OnTopic about your mod: Can you tell one thing: what size of the HDD you installed? Is it 9mm(0.37") or 12mm(0.47") thick? If it 9mm, then how are you thinking, can be an 12mm tall drive installed in that place?
P.P.S. most of existing 1Tb 2.5 inch drives has 12mm thick.