Convert Firewire CD drive to use HDD

[Liquidant]

Is it possible to convert my old and outdated CD drive that was external firewire to use a 3rd hard drive instead. It appears to power up ok but the firware on the firewire board seems to be set for the CD drive can this be changed to recognise the hard drive or am i wasting my time.

[ipgpe13]

Sorry I can not help you, since I have been trying the exact same hting with similar results.

I would assume there has to be a way to do it. I have tried various jumper settings on the hard drive, but no success.

[redwudz]

After reading your posts, I opened up a external DVD-ROM drive box that I have hooked to my laptop through a Firewire interface. (And sometimes USB 2.0)

I unhooked the DVD-ROM and plugged in an older ATA 100 HD. Set the HD to Master. Got a question mark in Device Manager the first time, deleted the drivers and the second time the drive came online.

I doubt if any Firewire external box has firmware. I think it is hardware entirely. (You can't change it) Even if the box is ATA 33 speed, the drive should still work at reduced speed. Though it is more likely ATA 100 speed at least.

Make sure the hard drive is master and make sure it's formatted. NTFS or FAT32 will both work, though NTFS is preferred. You should be able to go to Administrative Tools in the Control Panel and see the drive. You can reformat and partition there. (I am assuming XP as a OS- Others OS's may be different)

[Liquidant]

Thanx for the reply I swapped the drive over to master and reconnected it to the PC. it still being recocnised as a cdrom drive. there appears to be a chip boards on the Firewire connecting the power and the IDE cable to the drive.

SBP2\LSI_LOGIC&SYM13FW500-CDROM_DRIVE&LUN0\0001B70500000487

This is what it is recognised as. this makes me think they have set some type of firmware / or driver into the cgip board so it can load on any PC. Maybe I'm wrong but the drive will not appear however put the CD rom in and all is fine. it does not work with other cd roms either I have a spare pioneer that will not work .

[ofbarea]

Firewire to IDE bridge controllers usually are firmware upgradeable.

If the chipset in the firewire case is an Oxford, it could be possible for you to reconfigure the chipset by updating the firmware of bridge in the case to support HD..

It your case has Oxford 911 you will be able to support disks up to 120 GB with no problems. On the other hand if you have one of the older Oxford 900 chipset, your maximum transfer rate will be limited to 17 MBPS because there was a bug affecting early versions of this chipset. It was not reliable at faster speeds.

For more info on firewire cases firmware upgrade check this link: https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1277953&highlight=#1277953