Hanging notebook hard drive concept wouldn't work, but one can dream
I love this concept spotted by Yanko Designer for an external hard drive enclosure designed to hang off the lids of notebooks. I know it wouldn't work nearly as well in real life, causing the laptop to either slam closed or catapult itself off the back of the table if a vibration knocked the screen akimbo out of a perfectly balanced alignment. Still, I can dream of a neatly hidden, impeccably balanced external notebook hard drive to store my iTunes collection on, can't I?
the latest
latest episodes
one that suction cups onto the bottom of the back of the screen would probably be more stable.
or just have a super powerful magnet....
.. no wait
I have a WD Passport 250gb drive mounted on my laptop lid using a piece of velcro type stuff. It isn't actually velcro - it is stronger and uni-directional as far as I can see - got it off of one of those vertical laptop desktop stand things. It is about one inch square - but 2 or 3 square inches of velcro would do it. Yes, this does mean my laptop lid has a piece of velcro stuff stuck on it - I can live with the unsightlyness - especially as the drive only comes off when I want to back up other PCs.
And it is there precisely to hold the burgeoning media/podcast files I seem to accumulate like dust.
The tidiness of that USB cable is really what does it for me. If the important end was right-angled, I might buy this now, despite that really meaning paying this person for their concept and calling it a day. I'd have to, heaving with euphoria as images of a cordless desktop torment my trode-addled retinas like so many press shots.
Er, that is, I'm on your side with this one, Brownlee.
...Kids, don't diss this concept. I've actually been considering taking one of my 2.5" externals and velcro-mounting it on the back of the notebook to clear up desk space. The catch is that you can't attach it at the top of the lid like that, because a lot of the lighterweight notebooks will tip over backwards! The other catch is that you can't leave it attached when you toss it in the bag, because that hard drive will act as a fulcrum and break your LCD. When I did my brief tenure in tech support at Dell - before they let most of us go to send the work to the Hindus - you wouldn't believe the number of LCD replacement calls we got because someone had tossed their notebook in the bag, and it got their PDA wedged behind it and pressure got applied the wrong way. A 2.5" external HDD is about the same size as a PDA, natch.
Your lid is useful real estate-- I keep retractable USB, iPod, and firewire cables stuck there next to a mini hub/card reader and a WD Passport drive, all held with Velcro tape. If the hinges are strong enough, load it up!
I would imagine a SSD would be much lighter than a 2.5". Granted you won't get as much space. But I like the idea. My workspace at home has very limited counter space. It's about the same size area as you would get on a first class flight.
i likewise did this with a WD passport and sticky-back velcro. wasn't too bad on an ibm thinkpad, but would probably look like shit on the macbook (white)
Thaddeus - yep - mine's a Thinkpad - should have said so above. But actually, who cares what it looks like? It's storage. Oh - wait... sorry, I forgot: you said "Macbook". Form over function. (Ducks for cover before flame arrives.)
Do solid state drives have moving parts that vibrate?
#9,
No, that's exactly why they're called "solid state".
#10
Thanks, I thought so but I didnt understand why John wouldnt mention that.
All it needs is a little slide-out 'foot' to add an extra bit of stability and fix the top heaviness.