Just Sharing This TM 5402 M3 - Mounting a hard disk inside the case

jeallen01

Specialist Contributor
Joined
Oct 12, 2003
Messages
6,674
Reaction score
2,630
Points
113
My Satellite Setup
See Signature
My Location
Somewhere in England (possibly?)!
Now having 2 of these, I want one in the lounge AV rack - but, the last time I did that and connected an external hard disk to the rear USB port, it was a nuisance having the disk enclosure sitting anywhere near the box and the cable kept getting dislodged at one end or the other.

Decided to try and fix this issue by seeing if I could mount the disk inside the enclosure, and that's what I've just managed to do - and the key to keeping the whole job neat & quick was having:
- a cheap external 2.5" USB3 enclosure which held the disk, and which I was prepared to "sacrifice" to remove both the disk (mine is an old 320GB one, but you can use what you want) and the tiny USB3-SATA interface board. These enclosures are cheap (generally <£10) and easily obtained.
- the right cable to run between the rear USB2 port and the USB3 port on the interface board - and those aren't so easy to find because the cable from the rear USB port has to be a 90 deg one with the cable exiting upwards - but this is the one I eventually found, and it arrived a day or so ago.

After that the job was quite easy - took about 90 mins start to finish, and the photos below show what I finished up with - including the now-empty external disk case (but there is no photo of the chassis mostly wrapped in clingfilm to stop the swarf getting everywhere when I drilled and filed it!).

One thing to note: this USB-SATA interface board had a slight angular offset to allow the disk to be connected in the USB case without removing the board, and that meant that, when installed in the TM, it forced the USB connector against the TM case - so I packed some foam strip under the end of the disk to raise it slightly, and that stopped the connector touching the case.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0419a.JPG
    IMG_0419a.JPG
    368.5 KB · Views: 42
  • IMG_0420a.JPG
    IMG_0420a.JPG
    423.8 KB · Views: 42
  • IMG_0422aJPG.jpg
    IMG_0422aJPG.jpg
    386.4 KB · Views: 39
  • IMG_0424a.JPG
    IMG_0424a.JPG
    525.6 KB · Views: 44

Channel Hopper

Suffering fools, so you don't have to.
Staff member
Joined
Jan 1, 2000
Messages
35,538
Reaction score
8,554
Points
113
Age
59
Website
www.sat-elite.uk
My Satellite Setup
A little less analogue, and a lot more crap.
My Location
UK
What are those cases , are they Western Passports ?
 

2cvbloke

Regular Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2006
Messages
9,768
Reaction score
1,808
Points
113
Age
38
My Satellite Setup
No satellite stuff for the moment (aside from a 43cm minidish that was on the house already), Samsung SyncMaster T27B550 Smart TV & Monitor, and a few computers...
My Location
Near Pontop Pike, Co. Durham
Jst having a pre-falling asleep mooch about the forum, and just found this one, the HDD mounting is similar to how I mounted an SSD in my gaming PC (couldn't be bothered buying another 3.5-2.5" adaptor tray), I just zip-tied it onto the underside of the HDD cage, simple, effective, works... :lol:
 

jeallen01

Specialist Contributor
Joined
Oct 12, 2003
Messages
6,674
Reaction score
2,630
Points
113
My Satellite Setup
See Signature
My Location
Somewhere in England (possibly?)!
Jst having a pre-falling asleep mooch about the forum, and just found this one, the HDD mounting is similar to how I mounted an SSD in my gaming PC (couldn't be bothered buying another 3.5-2.5" adaptor tray), I just zip-tied it onto the underside of the HDD cage, simple, effective, works... :lol:
Think I've done the same in the past, and even stuck disks in-place with double-sided tape, especially when fitting extra disks to a chassis when there were no spare drive bays left o_O
 

jeallen01

Specialist Contributor
Joined
Oct 12, 2003
Messages
6,674
Reaction score
2,630
Points
113
My Satellite Setup
See Signature
My Location
Somewhere in England (possibly?)!
Update to Post #1 regarding the USB cable: I needed another one to mount a disk inside the other TM5402 - but found that the website of the ebay supplier ("plug-in shop") of the original cable is a complete mess, and so I finally had to find another supplier - this one from "Linas-display" - and it arrived this morning.
 

jeallen01

Specialist Contributor
Joined
Oct 12, 2003
Messages
6,674
Reaction score
2,630
Points
113
My Satellite Setup
See Signature
My Location
Somewhere in England (possibly?)!
Update 2: I fitted the disk inside the m/c as per the first TM, but then I tried some different!

Stage 1 : Instead of connecting the cable from the disk directly to the rear USB port, I connected a 4-port USB hub, with switches for each port, to the rear USB port and then I plugged the cable from the disk into that - and it worked.

Stage 2: I plugged a Wifi dongle into another of the switched ports - it didn't work at first but after moving around the hub ports and a couple of power OFF-ON restarts of the m/c then it did as did access to the internal hard disk, and so I now had both WiFi and the internal disk working as USB0.

Stage 3: I plugged a couple more (randomly chosen) flash drives in - one to another of the hub ports and the other to the front panel port, and the m/c recognised those as USB1 and USB2 (as well as still having USB0 working and the Wifi working).

Stage 4: still having 1 spare port on the hub and a cheap USB speaker setup, I plugged in the USB power lead of that to the spare port, and connected the stereo input to the speakers to the R & L audio outputs on the rear panel - and that worked and now I had sound, and the other stuff still worked.
(you may wonder why I bothered with this stage, but it's simply because the audio o/p via HDMI on this m/c is very, very low for some reason and I can't hear much from the speakers in the display - whereas the other receivers have no problem in driving the latter to a reasonable level)

Photos below, but I think you could do the same thing to many other receivers.
 

Attachments

  • TM1.JPG
    TM1.JPG
    332.4 KB · Views: 16
  • TM2.JPG
    TM2.JPG
    276.4 KB · Views: 16
  • TM3.jpg
    TM3.jpg
    334 KB · Views: 17
  • TM4.jpg
    TM4.jpg
    251.8 KB · Views: 18
  • TM5.jpg
    TM5.jpg
    246 KB · Views: 18
  • TM6.jpg
    TM6.jpg
    249.5 KB · Views: 18
  • TM7.jpg
    TM7.jpg
    245.5 KB · Views: 16
Top