[AlchEm1st]

This may seem a bit obvious to some but I thought of it today and figured I'd share.
If you have an external hard drive and a DVD/CD-Rom drive laying around, this is a much cheaper
alternative to buying an ext. DVD drive. (and I'm very cheap lol) First you need to disassemble
the external hard drive and unplug the drive from its two connectors (obviously unplug it from the wall first )



[attachment=2:1wgyhdm2]HPIM0136.JPG[/attachment:1wgyhdm2]

Next grab any old DVD or CD-Rom drive you can find laying around. I had an old CD-RW drive laying in my closet
and decided it would be better put to use than just lay there collecting dust.

[attachment=1:1wgyhdm2]HPIM0133.JPG[/attachment:1wgyhdm2]

Check the jumper on the back of the Drive and make sure that it's set to MASTER.
Then just hook it up to the connectors in the external hard drive and try it out!
Note: make sure the ribbon cable is hooked up the right way, I've hooked them up upside down before!

[attachment=0:1wgyhdm2]HPIM0139.JPG[/attachment:1wgyhdm2]

So here's the finished product. Works great on my desktop. (My Mini 9 is in the mail can't wait to get it!)
Should work just as well as any external drive you buy in a store. Heh hope this was a good enough first post lol.

P.S. There is no warranty on this guide! Please don't complain to me if you mess up your external hard drive trying this out!

Happy Modding!

-AlchEm1st

[phobos512]

There's an even easier way to do this, but I found it unreliable. They make IDE/SATA USB adapters. I bought one and an IDE DVD burner. I wasn't able to get the Mini to install Windows from the drive though. But that may have been related to the nLite'd version of Windows I made for that try.

[Djof]

There are countless of these on ebay, and they most often cost a single digit amount of dollars:
http://cgi.ebay.com/?ViewItem&item=260327733339

[AlchEm1st]

Yeah, I've used those before but also found them to be unreliable.
They're usually cheaply made and don't hold up well over time.
The external drives system boards are designed to last a long time
and I fell much safer using an external drive sled than a USB adapter.
(When I worked at Geek Squad we always used sleds and never adapters
for the same reason) Anyway it doesn't matter which way you want to
hook it up, both ways work. The point of the guide was to use stuff
you may already have laying around so you can save money.

[strider_mt2k]

Fun project! -and if it gets the job done so much the better!

When I first started planning the purchase of my Mini 9 I happened to have an extra laptop DVD/CD burner drive that Dell was nice enough to let me keep for some troubles they caused me with my Inspiron B130 notebook.

I did a quick search and found a very inexpensive USB enclosure for it, and it's been a fantastic little drive for doing stuff with my Mini 9 ever since!

Cobbling together stuff that ends up working and being useful is one of the great things about tinkering with computers as a hobby, at least for me.