Oh wow!!!  I didn't think that would fit anywhere!  Please, post lots of pics and a tutorial.  That would ROCK!!

Hi all, I thought this would be a sought after project so I did take some pictures...I am not sure where to post / upload them.  Anyone with info?

Some photos of the Apricorn Aegis Mini 1.8" HDD install.  Sorry, I don't have time for the entire disassembly procedure, but I believe others have posted it before.  The installation is fairly straightforward after many hours of engineering on my part.  I tried a USB internal hub, but something funky happens with the recognition when the wires get too long and are not properly insulated with ground shield.  Anyway, enjoy the pictures!

http://s221.photobucket.com/albums/dd312/mikelpn_EeePC/

Apricorn Aegis Mini HDD install note...Others have mentioned internal USB ports of some type that may or may not be usable.  I chose an external connection for a couple of reasons.  1. I am not sure the HDD will fully power down when the Asus if "off", 2. The external connection allows me to connect it to another computer for file transfers.  3.  I didn't want to brick my EeePC.  If you are soldering on a motherboard and you unsolder something small, it can take hours to repair the damage, or worse, leave you with a "cripple" PC.   Mike

mikelpn wrote:

UberNero...by clean surface I think you mean the bottom ram cover door...it does fit back on perfectly.  I'll upload another pic...thanks for the heads up.

Ok, i was looking at the tape and going sure it works, until it falls out

I might actually try this once i get my eee, and if the internal USB ports are easily solderable, ill give it a shot at making it completly inclosed.

Wow! Nice hack! If I get one of these notebooks soon (I'm on the fence, but increasingly leaning towards buying one) I'll have to give this a shot. Although, I think one could do it cheaper by getting a drive off eBay and an enclosure for it.

what exactly did you dremel off and off what? The EEE motherboard or the HDD controller board?

great mod btw - will definitely be doing this myself =]


edit - and did it take 30 hours because you were working out what to remove? How long would it take you if you had to do it again?

Last edited by MiL0 (2007-11-10 4:17:49 am)

that's good - sounds like it would take a lot less than 30 hours if one knew what they were doing =]

good work! this, more than anything, has convinced me to buy an EEE... I'm sure plenty of other people will be interested in your work as well.

perhaps, if you have the time, you could take some new photos showing exactly what you cut... maybe even circling them in mspaint/photoshop for the really dumb among us (ie - me!).

Thanks for the update... I guess the power problem can temporarily be solved by simply unplugging the usb cable when you shut the EEE down? It also means that attaching the usb cable to an internal usb port might not be such a great idea! (unless someone can work out a way to power the hard disk down via software or something).

Wouldn't this create a heat issue? normal hard drives get very warm, and you are taking away space for air circulation inside the EEE, and exchanging that space for something that actually generates heat. Have you noticed any increase in the EEE temperature?

Nice mod......have you managed to install XP to the 30 gig drive? If so, can you tell me what performance is like booting the O/S from a USB. How does it compare to the internal SSD?

Thanks for responding to my posts about the hard drive install.  To answer the last few questions...

I think that the USB not having power when the laptop is off may be a software issue because power does remain on..and that's why at this point
i decided to have the USB internal drive unpluggable from the outside of the computer.  One solution to the USB always power on may be solved with a small relay or a reed relay that switches on 5Volts when the rest of the computer is on.  Others have posted about the internal USB ports, but without a way to shut off the drive when the lappy is off, it doesn't' make a lot of sense to explore that possibility of internal connections yet, at least for me.

I do not have info on battery life yet because I haven't used the computer much on battery only.  I will post my observations when I can do a test, but I will need to do a test with and without the drive plugged in.  I hope to do a test next week.

As far as heat goes, I haven't noticed a big increase in heat or fan on time yet.  The computer normally gets warm after an hour or 2, and I had it on most of the day.  The drive's circuit board is not near any heat generating devices, but the drive itself is under the CPU area that gets warm.  The air flow through the device has not been restricted much at all.

I installed WinXP Home upgrade (Licensed and Activated) in the 4 gig flash drive, and I didn't have any major issues with installation.  (See the screencap on Photobucket, linked above).  It did take a couple of tries to get ACPI installed, but at this point, everything works.  I don't boot from the installed drive, although I could do a Linux boot from it if I wanted to.
I have about 450 mb of flash drive space available after installing programs and setting the pagefile from 128mb to 256mb.

Boot time for Windows XP SP2, I think, is normal for a 600-900 mhz device...about 30-40 seconds at best.  It's certainly slower than the Linux OEM that was installed.  I have used Linux before, but I wanted compatibility with my existing software programs and hardware (printer, etc).

I hope this helps to answer some of your questions.  I am by no means an engineer or qualified to answer real technical questions, but I will do my best to figure things out.  Thanks for your interest.  Anyone out there have some ideas or methods to shut off USB with the computer off?  I think that's where this project is stuck...

Mike