Preparation for school, Lego Version

Posted by Aaron Springer on September 3, 2007 under General | Be the First to Comment

This year, finally, I will be able to have a decently sized external hard drive. However, it will not be here until Friday, and since the class that actually requires the hard drive is on Wednesday, I was in a jam. However, I had an external 10GB drive (1/25th the size I needed) and an 80GB drive (little less than a third of the size I needed). As the case for the 80GB drive was damaged (Top of the case was broken off), I decided to cannibalize the case from the 10GB.

Sounds pretty straightforward, right?

Well, the 10GB was a laptop hard drive, and the 80GB was not. Difficult, yes. That is, if the 10GB had not been RedBrick II.

Background: About three years ago, I bought a kit to turn an old laptop hard drive I had floating around into an external hard drive. When it arrived, I found that the drive I had was about 3mm too big to fit into the case. After much swearing (Actually, it was a single “Oh, damn”), I had a plan. I had purchased quite a few Lego Bricks to build a computer for my daughter (Which is complete, and I may post pictures soon. Anyway, I had a bunch left over, so I decided to build a case for my external drive from those bricks. The result was RedBrick I, a 4GB external drive. I quickly upgraded the drive to 10GB, rechristening it RedBrick II.

This sufficed for a time, until I bought an 80GB external about a year and a half ago. At the time, I wanted to encase it in Lego Bricks, but I decided to wait.

Here we are in 2007, and it is time.

After measuring the drive with my calipers, I determined that the drive was about 3wx11hx25l, in Lego Measurements, which is about 8mm per unit width and length and 9.6 per unit height. I wanted to have the drive on it’s side as the thin plates would not be structurally sound. The thick walls of a vertical construction would also cut down on noise (Something I discovered when building my daughter’s computer. I think the air in the bricks insulates).

One thing I would like to say about my Lego creations. There are two Directives I live by when building with Lego bricks.

1. I never use glue. There is no reason. Especially with computer equipment. Glue makes it harder to replace/upgrade parts, and it also eliminates one of the most wonderful aspects of Lego computer components. Lego bricks act as natural ablative armor. If you drop my drive, part of the shock is transferred to the friction joints, preventing the complete shock from affecting the drive. I would much rather have to rebuild the case than rebuild all of the work on the drive itself.
2. I do not cut, drill, or Dremel bricks. The only time I ever violated that rule (shame, shame) was when I added a switch to my daughter’s computer for the internal lights. In that case, I cut only one brick.

I will have to violate these rules for my next project, but that is another matter.

So, I began. First, I examined the drive to make sure that there were no cables that would stick out. The IDE cable was pretty compact, but the power cables were a bit loose. Not too loose, but I would have to make sure that I didn’t squish the power cables between bricks. Due to my rule against glue, I press pretty hard, and a wire between bricks would quickly become two unconnected wires. Not good for electrical transmission.

Next, I laid out the foundation. No, I did not think to take pictures of it. I put down two 10×6 plates, and an 8×6 to allow for wall width and some tension relief for the cables out the back. Then, I built up the walls until I got to the USB connection. At this point, I plugged the USB cable into the drive to make sure that I would not block the port in any way. Luckily for me, this worked out quite well, as you can see. USB “B” cables are pretty much square, so the hole I made for it was also square.

Suddenly, there is a problem. When I measured the case, I did not account for the small tab on the front of the case that one pushes to open the original external case. So, I had to improvise. Luckily, it turned into a neat design element. Had to be careful, though. One more black piece there and my hard drive would have turned Goth.

As I built up, I had to allow room for the power switch and plug in for power, so I build a nice hexagonal hole to allow for both. When I bought the drive, the power switch had been put in reversed, so on was off and off was on. I could insert some snide comment about some women I have dated, but I shall refrain.

I continued building up the walls, running through my small collection of bricks not in storage, but I was able to complete the drive without too much muss and fuss. I added the “roof” as a design element. I am considering buying some sticker paper and printing out a logo for the side, but we’ll have to wait and see.