Ok, so I recently had a LCD screen on a MP3 player (RCA Lyra Jukebox to be specific) stop functioning which basically made it useless. So I've taken the HDD out of the MP3 player and am trying to devise a way of turning it into a portable HDD - would sure as hell beat using CD-RWs to save my music files and pictures and other small stuff.

The drive is a 20gig Hitachi HTC424020F7AT00 with a 39pin connector.

I have the female 40-pin connector, and was figuring on using a USB cable or some such to achieve turning this into a portable drive - but I doubt there are any USB cables out there with the nesacary number of cables; hence why I'm thinking of using an old printer cable, but that runs me into the problem of figuring out what wire to solder where, and since I'm not willing to risk frying the HDD (as it'll end up saving me $$$ in cd-r's) I was wondering if maybe anyone here has any ideas as to where to start with this little project?

I'll provide a picture of it, if someone'll be kind enough to point me to the thread that explains how we're supposed to post pics on the forums...


I've also got an 80gig IDE HDD that I would like to turn into an external drive...would use it as an internal, but this demon of a Dell computer only has SATA 3gb/s connections on the mobo and IDE connection for floppy drive only...*sigh*

Thanks in advance for any and all assistance

Quote: Originally Posted by Duane2184 Ok, so I recently had a LCD screen on a MP3 player (RCA Lyra Jukebox to be specific) stop functioning which basically made it useless. So I've taken the HDD out of the MP3 player and am trying to devise a way of turning it into a portable HDD - would sure as hell beat using CD-RWs to save my music files and pictures and other small stuff. The drive is a 20gig Hitachi HTC424020F7AT00 with a 39pin connector. I have the female 40-pin connector, and was figuring on using a USB cable or some such to achieve turning this into a portable drive - but I doubt there are any USB cables out there with the nesacary number of cables; hence why I'm thinking of using an old printer cable, but that runs me into the problem of figuring out what wire to solder where, and since I'm not willing to risk frying the HDD (as it'll end up saving me $$$ in cd-r's) I was wondering if maybe anyone here has any ideas as to where to start with this little project? I'll provide a picture of it, if someone'll be kind enough to point me to the thread that explains how we're supposed to post pics on the forums... I've also got an 80gig IDE HDD that I would like to turn into an external drive...would use it as an internal, but this demon of a Dell computer only has SATA 3gb/s connections on the mobo and IDE connection for floppy drive only...*sigh* Thanks in advance for any and all assistance

You can post pictures by adding them as atachments, just scroll bellow the submit reply button and click manage attachments.

Well, the 80GB is easy enough to use as an external; just pop it in an external enclosure that supports IDE and you've got yourself an external hard drive.

EDIT: Pictures would help, like Spatha said, but if it's 39pin, an IDE cable might work. If so, you could pull the guts out of an IDE external enclose, then do a bit of modding to make a smaller one.

Can't find my digi-cam, so I did the next best thing and found the product's web page; Travelstar C4K40

Anyway; as far as using a standard IDE cable - pins are too close together. Might have to fidgit with trying to figure out how to make an adapter or something, which will probably require a male IDE connector...

External Enclosures; think I could buy a cheap 2.0 one, remove the guts, and use those? Don't feel like forking out more than I have to for one of those things...

-edit- Oh...I forgot to mention that the MP3 player HDD doesn't come standard with a manner in which to apply power.

that looks like the same connection that a 2.5" laptop hdd uses, so i guess you could buy a 2.5' hdd to usb adapter and use that? something like this:

Quote: Originally Posted by CommanderZero that looks like the same connection that a 2.5" laptop hdd uses, so i guess you could buy a 2.5' hdd to usb adapter and use that? something like this:

Don't suppose I'd find that at RadioShack or something, would I?

i did the same thing when i got tired of my dell dj....i took it apart for the Hdd...i just picked up a cheap 1.8" hard drive enclosure like this one...works great as a backup drive...