Hard drive in floppy caddy?

I've been meaning to put a second hard drive in the media bay for a while now and there was a reminder by Driller which has spurred me on. I've searched around and only read that it won't work with the floppy caddy but is this just the mechanics of making the adaptor fit or is there something else.
Any and all addvice gratefully recieved.

 

Someone here actually modded a donor FDD caddy into a 2nd HDD. Should have bookmarked these pages... now I can't find it.

 

yes, that's what I thought but couldn't find it, only someone saying it wouldn't work.

 

Is this what you are looking for http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/551916-cf-29-floppy-caddy-dvd.html

 

It's on my list to put a 2nd hdd in a floppy housing. It can be done. I have the technology. I can build the six million dollar Toughbook. I just have been sidetracked with life and other projects.
Patience grasshopper, patience.

A simple but expensive way is to buy a hdd to optical drive adapter caddy and a 2nd dvd caddy and put the hdd adapter in place of the dvd drive. Solder the pins on the hdd adapter to force master "And away we go" as Mr Gleason said

 

I had a cf-72 optical caddy adapter for a hard drive
I never used it, it's kicking around somewhere
Anyway a second hard drive is useless in this day with
Usb2 portable hard drives (I have 1 @250GB)
Usb flash storage devices (A pile of those, 2GB-32GB)
And 320gb IDE hard drives that can be partitioned to add a storage section on the drive easy

 

Yes, easier into a dvd/cd caddy but £40/50 here (cheaper to buy a complete cf 27) where as I can pick up a floppy for peanuts. I think I'll give it a go but it may not be pretty.

 

I've been giving cashews to get them. Nobody wants peanuts anymore. Pretty soon it will be pistachios.

 

I know what you are saying but when I am travelling I never use the dvd and having a 500gb drive in the media bay means one less thing to loose/break/get sand in and also not having to plug/unplug an external drive with cable seems a bonus.

 

Yes, I was planning to use the addapter caddy, if only to get the interface cables and some shock mounting stuff would make it a nice arrangement.

 

Sata 2.5" hard drive used with the most compact sata/ide adapter ,from that member here,can't find the thread right now
With the highest capacity 2.5" sata drive 750MB or 1TB
Not cheap ,but will keep your media bay free for the second battery if needed

 

That's a fair point - I am only on a MK1 29 - would that be an issue?

Don't need the second battery at the moment and I have an external battery charger for a spare battery when needed

 

I don't think so
Only incompatability is using ssd's with that adapter as far as I can tell
I don't think you will have a size limitation

 

I must add that I feel having all my eggs in one hard drive leaves me a little nervous too.

If the media bay can be bootable too then should the worst happen in the middle of knowhere I can switch from the primary too.

 

If you partition you will be safer , If windows fouls up you can reload without wiping out your data
Heres the link to the adapter
http://forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/547710-cf-18cf-29-ide-sata-conversion.html

Talking about data safety, I replace so many hard drives ,and fix software issues for customers all the time
I personally back up on dvd-r disks @4.35GB each, that way I know my data is safe
I don't trust hard drives

Edit
Buy another caddy and duplicate everything if it's that critical

 

My only issue is the mixed success and durability of the sata adapters. I probably have seen about a 50% failure rate. Once you cut up the shock padding and force the assembly together, I don't trust it with any stress. I have installed them in cf 50's which get handled a lot gentler than a CF 29. If I wanted only 1 drive I would go with the WD 500gb IDE. I have the 2nd HDD caddy in my CF51 and I agree, knowing I have a 2nd bootable drive is reassuring.
If I need a 2nd batt or DVD I just pull the 2nd HDD out.

 

Fabbing this up is really easy. I was going to wait to build one before spilling my plan, but
You need 2 things. A usb external drive housing. All we want is the pcb. We want an old hdd caddy from any laptop. I am going to use a cf 50 cause it's padded.
gut the floppy and attach the caddy with VHB tape.
remove the usb connector from the adapter pcb and solder 4 wires.
Connect the 2 power wires the same as I did for the floppy to dvd conversion. You have 2 choices for the data. first is to hard wire them to an internal usb port.
2nd is to use 2 of the unused pins on the media bay connector to bring the data connections from an internal usb to the media port. With the tiny soldering done you will have a removable usb HDD in your media bay.

 

The main benefit to most Toughbooks is the easily removable hard drive caddy
It's easy to swap if things foul up

The link to the adapter looks like the best option on these
Won't have the stress that the standard ,non-modded type have

For reliability though stick with a large IDE drive @320GB

Remember just a few years ago 120GB was considered a huge hard drive lol

 

I forgot about reversing the connector on 1 of the adapters. I was planning on trying that as well. Too many irons and not enough fire. I will try that cause I already have an extra adapter to experiment with. But if I had to buy the modded adapter, I would not bother because the cost of the modded adapter plus a sata drive is as much or more than the large WD IDE drive. Which is reliable and plug and play.
I do like low cost alternatives though. If I can fab a floppy to accept a sata drive for less than 10.00 then it's worth it to experiment.

 

Thanks to all the advice !!! following both directions I can have 1Tb inside