I would like to get an external hard or Jazz drive for a laptop, but they are so doggone expensive. However, you can buy old IDE hard drives of decent size pretty cheap. Is there a possibility to hack this as an external drive?
My guess is you would have to do something like :
Come up with some sort of adapter between the IDE port and, say, the parallel or USB port. I don’t know much about these protocols, perhaps this is too difficult.
Try to use as is or modify(if there are any that are open source) an existing driver for an external hard drive.
I’ve been searching the net with no success. Any links would be greatly appreciated.
Are you sure? Kits to make your HD portable are plentiful on the net. A pretty old idea. Im not sure how you would connect it; but Im sure they figured that out. It has to have its own power suppy. The Jazz drive is really cheap. I saw them going for under $50 for the 1 gig models. A Jazz disk is just a HD on a platter.
As for your specific product I don’t have a link right this moment
Indeed you are correct handy, there are kits. I did not know that. Thanks for the link beatle, they provided information about these. That’s a great site.
I highly recommend AGAINST using a Jaz drive of any kind, but most particularly, I recommend against putting it in any old enclosure.
I have owned a Jaz drive since the earliest days, the original Iomega 1Gb unit. I’ve had my drive replaced 3 times under warranty. The Jaz drives have a problem with overheating. If the unit is under heavy usage, the carts will heat up and expand, and when they eject, it will tear the read/write head right off the arm. This has happened to me 3 times, despite every precaution I can take to use the drive lightly, spin down when not under use, etc. The heat problem will be worse if you put it in a nonstandard enclosure with inadequate cooling.
I’ve had continual problems with Jaz carts going bad as well. Fortunately the carts have a lifetime warranty, but that doesn’t help me recover the lost data on the carts.
The Jaz drive has multiple problems. I can only recommend it for the lightest duty, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of a huge external storage device. Use a Jaz drive heavily and it will self-destruct.
If you really must use this bad technology, there are USB versions available. There are also USB-SCSI converters that seem to work OK (or so I’ve heard).
All that being said, if you want a 1Gb SCSI Jaz drive and 10 carts, make me an offer. My drive has only the lightest usage since it was last replaced under warranty. I’ve been trying to dump this turkey for quite a while. I’ve got a drive worth less than $100 and about $1000 worth of media. I was stupid.
Well, I don’t mean to scare you, most people have an excellent experience with their Jaz drive, and I only have experience with the older 1Gb drive. Maybe the new 2Gb are better. But this was a big problem when they first shipped. Maybe it’s solved now. I dunno. I hate my Jaz. I hate that I spent $1000 on media.
