Can you hook up a HDD thru a compact flash slot....

I'm wondering if you could hook up a PATA hdd thru a compact flash interface(with proper adapter of course). I am thinking about getting a cheapo MP3 player that could access it. Then with a power adapter for the car, I could have a portable way to take my music collection with me. No need for Mega spendy carputer, or new head unit.

Any Ideas?

Nope sorry. The only CF adapters drive adapters out there are CF-to-PCMCIA. The CF interface uses the ATA standard, but larger and newer 2.5" and 3.5" drives won't be able to without a conversion. Most CF cards, but only a very limited handful of devices can interface using CFIDE. So you're stuck with using PCMCIA hard drives.

I'm also not optimistic about being able to use a CF-to-PCMCIA adapter with a PCMCIA-to-IDE adapter but it might be worth a shot if you can get one cheap enough. But to use a 3.5" drive with both of those adapters you would need yet another adapter (44-pin IDE to 40-pin IDE).
So that would be 3 adapters, and you would still need a seperate power supply to power the 3.5" drive. That's a bit extreme and there's no gaurantee it will work, but it's the only thing available that could even potentially be a workable solution.

I remember seeing a guy hook up a 250 gig HDD to his ipod and it working and booting up with the original OS he transferred to it.

Here is a link how to do it!
http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000547035805/

Quailane said:

I remember seeing a guy hook up a 250 gig HDD to his ipod and it working and booting up with the original OS he transferred to it.

Click to expand...

Yeah... but that's an MP3 player that COMES with an IDE interface (44-pin). He was asking about an MP3 player with a compactflash slot, which can't interface with IDE devices out-of-the-box.

I have an e-mail off to a place (Advantech.com )which has the item I'm looking for. I am asking them if it can work the way I want. Since the connector on it is way shorter than the CF card I will still have to do some serious hacking and reengineering to make it work.

Deadbot1_1973 said:

I have an e-mail off to a place (Advantech.com )which has the item I'm looking for. I am asking them if it can work the way I want. Since the connector on it is way shorter than the CF card I will still have to do some serious hacking and reengineering to make it work.

Click to expand...

If you're referring to this: http://www.advantech.com/EPC/newsletter/v28-07-15_00/4IDEsup.htm
You can ask, but it's probably only geared to work in IDE mode and won't translate ATA-1 transfer mode to IDE or vise-versa. In other words it won't work in your MP3 player unless your MP3 player can transfer to and from compactflash cards in IDE mode, or if you the hard drive you're using can use ATA-1 mode. I suggest that you research your hard drive first.

You can run into the same problem if you buy OEM Hitachi microdrives through eBay. They made plenty of them with only the ability to transfer in CFIDE mode. I got one of these and it would work fine in my card reader which could use CFIDE mode, but it wouldn't work in ANY camera or MP3 player I put it in because they only use ATA-1.

Thanks for the info. I haven't gotten an answer from them yet, or bought the hard drive in question.

Captain Slug said:

Yeah... but that's an MP3 player that COMES with an IDE interface (44-pin). He was asking about an MP3 player with a compactflash slot, which can't interface with IDE devices out-of-the-box.

Click to expand...

I know, but I was thinking that was his only option for an MP3 player with a huge hard drive.

You could buy an ipod on ebay that has a broken hard drive.

And that would be much simpler than what he is trying to do.

Yeah simpler hardware wise. I am an avid disliker of the iPods and iTunes. There other options. This was just one of those crazy little ideas that runs through my head.

Well it wouldn't HAVE to be an ipod. There are plenty of other hard-drive-based mp3 players.