laptop harddrive with a desktop motherboard?

[Guest]

Hi,
Is it possible to use a laptop hard drive with a desktop motherboard? I have an ATA100 3.5 inch desktop drive that I would like to replace with a smaller, lighter, and more sturdy 2.5 laptop drive. If it is possible, what sort of adapters or cables do I need? What kind of laptop harddisk should I get (Do they come in with different connectors or standards?)

Thanks!
Sharif

 

[Guest]

To tell you the truth I am not really sure why you would want to do this even if it was possible! Laptop drives Cost more then IDE Desktop drives and the interface is different.

I guess to narrow it down for you I highly doubt that it is going to work.

Lars Coleman
http://home.earthlink.net/~larscoleman

 

[Guest]

Not to mention that laptop drives are slower than desktop drives.

 

[Crashman]

Yes. Compgeeks sells a converter kit.

Suicide is painless...........

 

[Guest]

Good points. I'm going to be carrying this desktop around in a backpack and running it from a battery. We are using a desktop motherboard because we need some cards that they don't make in laptops yet. What a pain heh? So, despite being slower and more expensive, it might be worth to reduce the size, weight and increase the reliabilty.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the pointer. I couldn't anything that sounded like it on www.compgeeks.com. It is under the 'cables' section? If you could send me a link to the part, that would be awesome!
Thanks again,
Sharif

 

[Crashman]

It's in the Hard drives section under Adapters. Part number 205-1991 on this page:
http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=205-1991
$3.95 plus shipping.

Suicide is painless...........

 

[Guest]

dirtcheapdrives.com used to sell a complete converison unit last I looked.

 

[crapple0]

out of curiousity...what is this for?

~Crapple0

"intel inside, idiot outside"

 

[Guest]

thanks!

 

[Guest]

It for a virtual environment system. We currently have users walk around a large room with cables that supply video for the head mounted display. The cables are a big problem because they get tangled, restrict the user's movement and often cause breaks in presense (where the user becomes aware that they are in our lab, rather than in the virtual environment). So we are attempting to put the rendering on the user's back. We need two channel output, one for right eye and another for the left. We don't see any laptops with these feature in to near future, so we are going with a desktop.

 

[Guest]

Go look at this site <http://www.cellcomputing.com/> they have a number of compact PCI single board computers that fit in the footprint of a standard hard drive.

Mike