More then just a drive with a sticker on it.
Well… this started out like it was going to be a great idea, then turn sour, then got good again… It started back years ago February of 2000 I think it was, when I purchased a whopping 3Gig FireWire Hard Drive to compliment my Pismo Powerbook. 3Gig in the palm of your hand? Its remarkable that for almost $200 back then you could accomplish such a task. Hey.. OS9 Loved it, and I ran OS9 on this while running OS X in Beta on my PowerBook. Anyway… As time moves on… It just wasn’t enough space for anything these days. I still have an OS9 Install on it for my Mothers-in-Law Mac mini to runn classic for the kids games, but that is about it.
Then it hit me. I know I’ll buy a cheap new 2.5 inch ATA drive and just put it in that enclosure and save a bunch of money. It is brilliant, I tell ya.
Well, much to my dismay…as I carefully try and take the vinyl wrapping that was glued to what I thought was a plasic shell, only to discover:
1: They used really good glue, and it ripped and tore as I destroy any possibilty of using again.
2: the plastic shell was just a skeleton, that now exposed the circuit board and top of the hard-drive
Now what to do…? I had already purchased a 120GB drive from CompUSA with an e-Rebate wich cut it down to only $99!
Well.. My uncle brought over some heat shrink-wrap rubber tubing stuff that was just a hair too small to fit the drive, but I persevered with using a heat gun to make it soft enough to work it over the plastic shell moving it just a hair each time.
Skinned Fingers to prove it.
I trimmed the the tubing straight, and then used the heat gun to smooth out the wrinkles. It looked pretty bad (sorry I didn’t take a pic of the nasty drive) And because we had spent, like, two hours working this heat-shrink tubing, the ends were flaring out and would not shrink snug to the drive. So I wrapped the ends with black electrical tape. It worked… But now it really looked like a reject on it’s way to the island of misfit toys. So I went digging for something to cover it, when it hit me… I have the perfect decal. My autographed Anthrax Decal with the pic of Scott Ian…
A little trim here and there, and now I have a one-of-a-kind drive that after all that…. still works..
So what now looks like just a drive with a sticker on it, was a crazy, time consuming experience that I should’ve just spent the extra $70 to buy a firewire drive… but it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun.