Home made cooler for Astone RD230 hard drive enclosure

Hard drive is a device for storing and retrieving digital information. In the Era of High Definition, hard drive space just does not seem to enough. I vaguely recall my first desktop only has 6.4GB of space, and I never fill it up. Now, even my key-size USB drive has 8GB of space. 

If you have seen my previous posts, I have set up an old HP DC7800 as my HTPC, so number of internal hard drive is restricted to two due to the limited SATA ports and space. I have been using generic brand hard drives for years. Prior to the recent upgrades, I owned three 1TB external hard drives. These hard drives just take up too much of space so I decided to replace them with one single 3TB hard drive. Despite of buying single 3TB external hard drive, I opt for an external enclosure that will take two 3TB hard drives so I will have 6TB in a case. Having survey the external enclosure prices for weeks, I decided to go for a dual-bay external enclosure from Astone that only costs AUD 45 in local PC store. The model is Astone ISO RD230. it made of aluminium alloy case claimed to dissipate the heat better. It has USB 3.0, fully compatible with SATA I and II hard drives. In addition, it also supports RAID 0, RAID 1 and JBOD (just a bunch of drives).

Since this is a fanless design enclosure, I decided to go for low-power Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB hard drive. WD Caviar Green is a new series hard drive that is designed with environment in mind (make sense to call it green). Caviar Green generates less heat and uses less power compared to normal hard drive. This design however comes with a price, it runs at 5400 rpm instead of 7200 rpm in normal hard drive. Caviar Green therefore might run slower than conventional hard drive.

Astone RD230 external enclosure

Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB

My first impression of Astone RD230 when I received it was bad. I think it has stupid design as the screws used to lock the hard drive bracket are small and difficult to hold property with screw driver.

To install hard drive bracket back to the enclosure, you have to hold the case, let the bottom facing down when you put the screws back. This is because if you put the enclosure bottom facing up as shown in the picture above, the screws are too short to reach the hard drive bracket. 

Second, the hard drive indicator light connector is positioned in a awkward location. When you open the hard drive enclosure, there is one connector connects the indicator light cable from the front to the electronic board at the back of the case. This connector is small and flimsy, you have to use precision screwdriver to pull it out or install it back. 

Well, guess that's what I should be expecting from the cheapest 2-bay external enclosure I could find. 

Caviar Green with hard drive bracket in Astone RD230

Indicator light connector and main board

Upon the installation, the new external hard drive runs quite well. My only complain is the amount of heat generated is slow to dissipate. Using a software called CPUID HW monitor, the external hard drive constantly goes near to 50 degree Celsius. I know the temperature is well within the working range (<60), but I don't like the hard drive goes anyway near to 50, so I decided to make a USB powered fan attaches to the front part of the enclosure, hoping that the fan will draw more air into the case and reduces the hard drive temperature. 

I ordered two 12V DC fans from ebay (AUD2.50 for both). then wind up cables according to their polarity: black to black, red to red. Then I recycled an old USB cable, cut it open and reveals 4 cables inside (red, black, white and green). Get rid of green and white and connect the red cable from USB to red cable from the fan and the same for black cable. Once you plug in the USB port, the fan should run. 

DC fans ordered online (5cm)

Wind the cables with same polarity together

Inside USB cable once rubber cover is removed

There are 4 wires inside a USB cable

Next, I cut out a cardboard that is large enough to cover the front part of the external exclosure. At the centre of the cardboard, 2 holes with the size of DC fan were made. DC fans then were glued to the card board with blowing side facing the external enclosure.

stick the fans to the cover

making fan cover with holes

Lastly, just use some black tapes to stick the fans to the front cover of the external enclosure. I know it does not look very good.

Stick the DC fans with cover to the external enclosure

So, how well does the home made cooler work? I did some tests using the CPUID I mentioned above, without the fan, hard drive ran around 47 degrees. Once the fans were installed, it ran between 40-41 degrees.

WD Caviar Green temperature Before and After the fans installation

Despite of the temperature drops, it is still slightly away from my ideal temperature, which is below 40 degree. I figure the ventilation might work better if I drill some holes on the plastic barrier placed between the hard drive and the fans. I don't have any drilling tool now, so gonna wait for a bit.  

Heroic Attempt part 2 - Asus F3SV repair manuals

Despite of previous failure attempt to fix an Ipod touch, I decided to try my luck again to fix my old laptop that has a faulty DC power jack. This is my 4-year old Asus laptop, model F3SV. Core 2 duo T7300, 2GB ram with external Geforce 8600M GS graphic card. It was one of the higher end laptops back in the day when most of the laptops on the market were using on board graphic card. This laptop has served me well, despite of having the not-so-popular Window Vista. Believe it or not, my vista has been running flawlessly for the past few years without any antivirus program. Due to the external graphic card, this laptop simply plays any videos files smoothly I throw at it.

This laptop however has a lousy DC power jack design. As a matter of fact, this is not the first time I ran into the same trouble. About 2 years back, I accidentally hit the DC power jack to the wall, the laptop not powered up instantly. I sent to the Asus service centre and they quoted AUD120 to fix the matter. When the same issue occurred again (I didn't even knock the DC power jack this time), I brought it back to Asus service centre, expecting them to fix the problem with the same price. Unfortunately, this time they quoted AUD400 as they claimed this is an obsolete machine, so they have to change the whole motherboard instead of replacing the DC power jack. I did not get it fixed this time as $400 is just way too much for a 4-years old laptop. So I decided to DIY again. 

I guess Youtube is a pretty good place to learn new things. I have watched these videos countless times before I started the repair. I have to stress that this is an advanced repair as it requires a full dismantle of the laptop. So try at your own risk. 

The videos on the top will guide you how to dismantle the Asus F3SV. I will attach some photos so you get a better idea how to get it done properly. 

Here is my Asus F3SV

back

You can see that there are many screws at the back cover. 1st thing you need to do is, open the ram cover.

Once you open the cover, you can see the cooling fan, ram and motherboard.

Next, remove the hard drive and the battery. The hard drive is located at the bottom right corner.

In order to remove the screen. You need to unplug the cables connect to the motherboard which I point out in the picture below. Just pull it out vertically. Mark down the location of each wire so you won't plug into the wrong place later. 

Once the cable is unplugged, flip the laptop and open the covers on screen hinges. The hinge cover should come out easily. Once you open the hinge cover, just unscrew the screw in the hinge, unplug the screen connectors and gently pull out the cables that were previously connected to the motherboard.

Flip the laptop to the back and open the screws on both top corners. 

Next, flip the laptop again and gently open the screen. Hold both sides of the hinges and put the screen vertically. The screen should come out easily.

The next thing you need to do is removing the keyboard. You can use this guide to replace the keyboard as well, there is no need to remove the screen if you just want to replace a faulty keyboard. 

In order to remove the keyboard, flip to the laptop backside again and open 2 screws with a 'K' letter as shown in the pictures below.

Once you remove these screws, flip it to the front side again. Look for small silver clips on top of the keyboard, using something flat, gently push the small clip and lift the keyboard. There are about 4 - 5 clips on the top of the keyboard. 

When you lift the keyboard, do it slowly as there is ribbon connect the keyboard to the motherboard. Just lift the keyboard halfway, then use a flat screwdriver to gently push down the clip that is holding the ribbon. Once the clip is released, the ribbon should come out easily.

This is just another laptop picture intends to show how the ribbon looks like

From now onward will be the complicated part.

First, you need to remove the DVD rom. There are 2 screws you need to remove as shown in the picture below. 

Once the correct screws are removed, the DVD rom should come out easily. 

Now, you need to remove all the screws that are on the black covers. I don't remember how many of them, you just have to look for them carefully.

After you have removed all the screws at the bottom cover, flip to the front. Now open the screws on the silver cover. Once you remove all the screws on the front, the silver cover should come out easily. Don't lift the cover yet as there is one more ribbon from the touch pad connects to the motherboard.

You will be able to see the motherboard after the silver cover is removed. In order to move the motherboard, first you need to unplug three connectors connect to the motherboard. Two on the top, one on the side. 

After unplugging the connectors, there are couple more screws on the motherboard you need to remove. Again, look carefully which screw to remove before the motherboard can be lifted up.

To replace DC power jack, I order the part from online that only costs AUD4.

Asus F3SV DC power jack

To replace faulty one, you need a solder ironing. Carefully melt the old solder and pull out the old DC jack from the motherboard. Then solder the new one onto the motherboard. 

Once you have done it. Reverse the whole procedures to assembly the parts into one piece.

Good luck and have fun. 

Estimated time to dismantle and assemble : 2.5 hours

Heroic Attempt to fix Ipod touch Second Generation

It been weeks since I have done any DIY stuffs. Due to the bore-some, I decided to repair my 4-year old Ipod touch that has a faulty headphone jack. Having watched many online videos and read many online instructions, I think I am confident to repair the Ipod touch myself. So, I went online and order a set of Ipod touch repair kits and OEM audio jack. After 2-week of waiting, they are finally here. 

Just cut things short, here is one of the video guides I had watched.

The basic of the repair is simple. Remove the digitizer, lift the LCD, unsolder the headphone jack and replace with a new one. Sound easy right?

Here is what happens after 1 hour.

First I broke the digitizer when I tried to remove it from the metal case. The digitizer is tightly inserted until the plastic removal tool was broken before the digitizer was lifted up. So I was forced to use a harder tool that did not do any good on the digitizer. The tool I used had successfully lifted the digitizer, but at the same time cracked the digitizer. I checked online and realized a new digitizer costs around AUD10, So I thought maybe its worthwhile to continue the repair. When I tried to lift the LCD panel, unequal pressure put stress and damage the centre part of the screen. A new LCD with digitizer now will cost AUD30. Having broken both parts, I am not sure if I can replace both of them flawlessly even with the new parts. Considered a new Ipod touch only costs AUD200. I decided to give up on repairing.

Lesson for myself, just because you like DIY, does not mean you can do everything yourself. Sometimes, its easier said than done. So leave the jobs for the professional.

Look on the bright side, it gives me more reasons to get an Iphone.