[PLUG-TALK] Oversize 2.5" Hard Drive

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 03:24:48PM -0700, Rich Shepard wrote:
>   I replaced the IBM Travelstore 10G, 5400RPM hard drive in the ThinkPad
> 600E with a Hitachi 80G, 7400RPM drive. When I tried to put the IBM drive in
> an enclosure sold for 2.5" IDE hard drives, it would not fit: too wide. It
> measures closer to 2.75" wide. Is this a fairly common situation? Are there
> enclosure brands that are larger than others?
> 
>   I'm not looking forward to driving all the way back to Fry's to return the
> enclosure unless I know that there are ones made into which this wider drive
> will fit.

0) All drives are about 2.75 inches wide ( and 1 GB = 0.93 GiB, so they
exaggerate sizes in both directions, lying dogs!).  Some older ones are
too thick, but the 10GB Travelstars I've seen are all about 10mm .  Most
IBM laptops put the drives in "caddies", thin metal shells with 2 screws
on each side that adapt the drive to the laptop.  A drive with the caddy
surrounding it will not fit some external enclosures.

1) The external enclosures are about 50% successful with Linux, so any
given enclosure may disappoint you anyway, regardless of mechanical fit.
See http://wiki.dirvish.org/index.cgi?USB2Drives for some examples.

2) There are IDE small-to-large adapters, $10 or less.  Fry's has them,
ENU may have them.  You can connect your almost-little drive to the
adapter and then to a regular IDE cable in a regular computer.  Or to
a larger external USB2 cage (see statement 1).

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs