shamino wrote on 2025-02-28, 01:42:
Good point. I'll crack it open and see what cap(s) are in it. The manufacturer calls themselves "Asian Power Devices" who I've never heard of. I'll probably end up recapping it.
Might as well anyways.
I don't remember if I've seen Asian Power Devices, but I have seen "ADP" quite a few times before, and that one was pretty OK. IIRC, I have a few industrial "open-frame" PSUs from them. Not quite on-level with Mean Well, but respectable still.
shamino wrote on 2025-02-28, 01:42:
I like this older enclosure which uses a desktop style 5.25" drive. It's faster too.
It might also last longer. 😀
The difference comes from the bearings on the spindle motor - with desktop style drives, the motor is large and also has larger bearings, which generally can take more use/abuse. In contrast, laptop drives have smaller spindle motors with smaller bearings, so they will wear faster. Of course, laptop drives do run at a lower speed, so that does help them a little (and also helps make them more quiet too.)
But yeah, for convenience, especially if planning to use optical media a lot, desktop drives are the way to go.
shamino wrote on 2025-02-28, 01:42:
Only wrinkle is that the drive I attached is too deep to reassemble the enclosure. It needs the shallow depth that's more common with SATA drives. I think I have one IDE DVD drive that should fit, which I had other plans for, but I might change those plans.
Most late IDE drives should be pretty short, especially any LG ones.
I have regularly been finding them at my local flee market for typically $0.50 to $1 a pop, so I've finally caught up on my hoard with those.
The most irritating part about that flea market is that there is one guy who takes apart whole computers and only sells the mobo's out of them. Everything else he scraps. Buy if you ask him to buy any of the scrap (even if for a price that's better than what he would get from the metal recycler), he refuses unless you give him close to retail price of a new drive, which is really silly! Essentially, he's one of those "I'm either going to make a killing worth of money... or starve as usual" type of people. I mention him here, because he always seems to pull a stack-ton of those very late LG IDE optical drives. And guess what he does with them - rips them apart and only takes their main PCB to give to the recycler for "precious metals inside"... which are like $0.20-0.50 per board absolute max. I offered him $2 per drive, higher than what everyone else is selling on the market, and he still refuses.
