Ide-Harddisk to CF in Clie ?

[Unregistered]

Hi all,

I know there are tons of adapters to use a Compact Flash Card as an IDE harddisk in a PC, but I am looking for exactly the opposite:

An adapter/connector/piece of cable... to connect an IDE harddisk (probably a 2 1/2" notebook disk with external power/battery) to a compact flash slot just like in the Sony NX73V. You could have a very neat 30 Gig MP3 Player ...

If it works CF->IDE why not IDE-> CF ?

Has anyone seen a thing like this ?

TIA
Bavarian Wolf

[meir87]

This would be very cool. I'll look around.

[winexprt]

Couldn't you just use an IBM CF microdrive? Seems alot easier to me. Less capacity I know...but easier.

[meir87]

No external power.

[winexprt]

Originally posted by meir87
No external power.

...for what? I recall reading a post a while back of someone who did in fact get a microdrive to work on an NX....ate alot of power, but it worked.

[meir87]

Thats exactly why I would want external power. I had a microdrive on my NX and it drained about 20% of my battery from 1 hour of music with headphones and screen off. With my MS I've listened to over 1.5 hours with less that 5% of the battery used.

[winexprt]

Oh ok. Thanks for the clarification. I know..I LOVE music on my NX80...problem is my biggest MS is 128MB...which means I can only load about 25-30 songs on it at one time. Was going to invest in something like a 512 or higher MS...then I thought to myself, just save the $$$ and get a huge CF card for peanuts and use the difference on a sweet new iPod,

[meir87]

Hmm... huge CF=1GB=$150(at cheapest)=peanuts(according to you). You think you could give me some peanuts :D

[winexprt]

Haa. You're right. I guess I was overstating the existance of Weapons of Mass Storage.

[squeff]

Unless the hardware fully emulated a CF memory card, you'd need a driver (software).

This seems like one of those thing that'd be cool, but may not be very practical. By the time you rigged up additional power, make a case, etc., you might as well have just purchased a HD-based MP3 player from Apple, Dell, or elsewhere.  Especially since the Clie is a pretty limited music player anyway.

[sebring]

Originally posted by meir87
No external power.

If you're gonna have a power cord of some kind anyway, why not just plug in you Clie power cord when the microdrive is in, or use one of those battery extenders that uses AA or 9V batteries.

[meir87]

Originally posted by squeff
Unless the hardware fully emulated a CF memory card, you'd need a driver (software).


CF cards are IDE so no drivers would be required. Just a connector.

Originally posted by sebring

If you're gonna have a power cord of some kind anyway, why not just plug in you Clie power cord when the microdrive is in, or use one of those battery extenders that uses AA or 9V batteries.

If I'm going to have external power anyway I rather have 20gb for less money. This would be expecially useful in the car for music/video.If the adapter were about $15 like most CF-IDE adapters and you can get a good wo gb laptop drive for about $100 (or even a 160gb dektop drive for ~ $70 at Fry's) you could have tons of storage space for your clie in the car for less than a 1gb microdrive.

[meir87]

This would work:
http://www.semsons.com/comflastopcc.html
http://www.kanguru.com/cables.html#cardbus

[anitanium]

that would be so cool
but if you need external power supply might as well get a new harddrive for desktop

[meir87]

I'm saying you could use that in th car and have the thing power itself off the clie and power the clie off the cig. lighter.

[coolride]

So has anyone tried it yet? I might try it myself, considering the semsons Compact Flash to PC Card is only $20. If I can't get it to work, at least I'll have 30 days to return it, less shipping I believe. It's worth a shot I guess...all in the spirit of Clie's right?

[mjhamilton]

how about disecting a microdrive, removing the internal drive, running some cabling and fitting a full size HDD with external PSU??....

... sounds about the only solution to me that would work...

[Forest_Noggle]

what about an adaper from Kangaroo.com?

Saw this site yesterday and they make some cool stuff.

Jay

[michaelreagon]

my lil bit of input. . .
good idea kinda!? would be cool and chunky. clies chunky enough. but if im thinkin right clies run FAT, and that kinda means 2Gb max, anyways good luck bro's n ho's
Love ur work