I have a USB external CD-RW by Iomega that the drive does not work
anymore. Can I put an IDE hard drive in place of the CD? And if so do
I set the hard drive to slave or master. It looks like the power and
data pugs will fit in the hard drive.

DJW wrote:
> I have a USB external CD-RW by Iomega that the drive does not work
> anymore. Can I put an IDE hard drive in place of the CD? And if so do
> I set the hard drive to slave or master. It looks like the power and
> data pugs will fit in the hard drive.

Check the jumper legend on the CDRW. It could be, the metal shell of the
CDRW (top or bottom plate), has stamped in it "MA SL CS" or the like.
The label may be over top of three jumper positions on the optical
drive interface. (I didn't notice that right away - it took me some time
to notice that in the right lighting and held on an angle. I wasn't expecting
the labeling to be stamped into the metal of the optical drive packaging.)

For a first guess, I'd probably try Master (or "Master Only" if Western Digital).
Now, the enclosure I have sitting in front of me, says "Master" on the ribbon
cable itself. So the company that made the enclosure, made sure to leave a hint
if there were no other instructions around.

As for fitting a drive, the CD would be 5.25", while the hard drive is
3.5". You need a set of "U rails", to convert a 3.5" drive to 5.25",
if the drive screws attach to the sides. The "U rails" are the metal
things on the right of this photo. At one time, every retail drive you
bought, threw a pair of those into the retail box. Now, they're harder to
find. So far, I've satisfied all my needs, with the leftovers from
old Maxtor retail boxes.

http://www.startech.com/Share/Galler...VE2.Alarge.jpg

Sometimes, an enclosure connects to the optical drive, from the bottom.
And then, holding down the drive might be more difficult to
arrange. The "U rails" won't help in that case. It all depends
on the enclosure design, as to whether fitting a 3.5" would be
easy or not. The enclosure designer doesn't have to support 3.5"
drives, if the enclosure is only intended for a fixed 5.25" application.

Paul

Van Chocstraw wrote:

> Van Chocstraw wrote:
>> DJW wrote:
>>> I have a USB external CD-RW by Iomega that the drive does not work
>>> anymore. Can I put an IDE hard drive in place of the CD? And if so do
>>> I set the hard drive to slave or master. It looks like the power and
>>> data pugs will fit in the hard drive.
>>
>> How is the master set? Was the CD a slave to it? If so, set it as slave.
>> You may need to change the master from single to master. If it's set to
>> cable select, set the slave the same.
>
> PS: if the CD was on the second IDE port then using the same cable it
> would be a master. You can have two primary hard drives, one on each IDE
> port or you can have them both on IDE0 as primmary and secondary.
> (master/slave){racist terminology]

OP wants to recycle an external USB drive by replacing CDRW with hard
drive. Have coffee. Respond again.