yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Eee Pad Transformer General] jtl60047:
Had any luck with the tablet itself - taking it apart?

Daughter bumped the BACK of the AT - no dent - but it cracked the underside of the LCD.... Go figure. It's still useable - just has some annoying spiderwebbing.

I have replaced the LCDs on cell phones and laptops - just curious how hard it'd be to do a tablet.

Thanks.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] earlyberd:
It would have no effect. Garbage collection is purely for increasing transfer speeds, which you would not see because in this case you're limited to the USB 2.0 maximum transfer speed of 60 MB/s, instead of the maximum 250+ MB/s that the SSD is capable of over SATA.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Please help me.

I'm on revolver. What should I format the hdd as before I send the dock to people? What is the safest format partition size that everyone can read?

Just had someone send their dock back to me. He said it doesn't work, but I plugged it in and it worked instantly. I'm guessing it's the partition size that's the problem.

Any other idea?
[Eee Pad Transformer General] darkhawkff:
The safest bet is FAT32. The real problem is if they are like me and sometimes might want to carry a file >4gb. The only real option then is either ext 3/4 or NTFS. Most people may not have the mods/ROMs to read NTFS by default, and most likely that is what it was formatted as and thats probably why they can't read it.

Atleast, that would be my guess.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
You're absolutely right. I'm gonna reformat these to fat32 and send back to them.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] darkhawkff:
Another problem is if they want to hook it up to their PC via the cable, if it's ext3/4 they probably won't be able to read it on a Windows based PC. That being said, I still think FAT32 is the safest bet. If they want >4gb files on the drive, I kinda assume they know what they are doing and will be able to format it as NTFS and figure everything out on their own.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] sleepy926:
[HARD MOD] will it bee possible to add a wifi card or bluetoo to use it wireessl

[HARD MOD] will it bee possible to add a wifi card or bluetoo to use it wirelessssssss!!!

:D
[Eee Pad Transformer General] KMyers:
This looks awesome, my only wish would be to see a way to also mount the drive to a computer (via Micro USB or Mini USB) when needed for large transfers
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
If you had read the op you'd known that when connected the tf to the PC the PC recognizes the he'd instantly. you can transfer in and out files directly to and from the PC.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
What in the world for?
[Eee Pad Transformer General] sashajovicic:
And what about SSD discs? Possible?
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
More than possible. It's preferred, actually. The reason I used hdd was because it's cheaper. A 500 gb hdd cost me $45 (it was on sale). A 500 gb ssd is around $500.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] praxibetelix42:
Seriously? Amazon; 64 GB SD card, $80. Don't void your warranty to put a tiny ssd inside something with an SD slot.:p
[Eee Pad Transformer General] darkhawkff:
Why bring back an almost 2 month old thread with a quote thats 3 months old? Of course memory will come down in price as time goes on.....And as usual, I think you missed most of the points behind why you would put an SSD in instead of another SD or platter based HDD.....
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Well, it's been months, and that post that he quoted still doesn't make sense. If you're going to mod the dock voiding your warranty, why only put in something that can only hold 80 gig of memory? They sell the 64 gb sdcards nowadays, you know. And 500 gb ssd costs an arm and a leg. Not all of us are made of money.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Update on this if anyone cares. I sold my previous dock and got a new one. Put in a 750gb drive instead of the 500gb I previously put in. I did attempt to put in an extra battery pack. For now, it's a no go. And the cloaking device keeps burning out on me.

Anyway, here's a screen shot of my storage :D

Will take me a while to fill it up like I did with the last one.

By the way, through my endeavors, I've further refined my methods. Procedure is now completely safe :D Now, my next goal is to find a 9.5mm 2.5 1T hdd for cheap. Too expensive for my blood right now.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] yalkowni:
Just wondering did you make any profit out of selling the dock
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Not really. Why? I wanted to redesign what I did before with an even bigger hard drive. Didn't intend to make money off of it.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] yalkowni:
No just curious. I understand your intentions .... hence your name
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
If anyone cares, I decided to take the plunge today and added in an extra battery pack connected parallel to the already existing battery pack in the dock. The idea is to add may be 6 more hr of battery life to the overall setup. So far everything seems to work. No explosion. Surprisingly, everything fits with a minimum curvature of the keyboard when I reattached it. I can still close the netbook form. In fact, it's hard to tell that the keyboard curves at all unless you know to look for it.

Of course, the extra battery added extra weight to the dock.

So, the TF recognizes the 750gb hdd, the on/off switch for the hdd works, and the TF also recognizes the new battery setup. Will be doing testings to see how long this battery setup lasts. Should be interesting to see the result.

I will post pictures later when I have completely reattached everything. Right now, I'm still in the testing phase, so everything looks like a mess.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Gary13579:
You should make a megadock, use an extra 4 batteries instead of HDD+1 batt. 32 hours of battery life :).

Sent from my Transformer TF101
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Spidey01:
A year or two ago, I was looking at bending a device to my will and hit the road block that I'd need a soldering iron to make a go of it, and back then time was a lot cheaper than money. Can't remember what I was tinkering with but what I do remember, is looking up a thing on how to use the iron....and the best advice was to b/p for burns. Because sooner or later, no matter how perfect and discplined you may be, eventually you will touch the wrong end, probably more than once!
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Gary13579:
Lol... clearly the solution is to only solder with a Coldheat xD. You may never actually get any solder DONE, but at least your hands will be nice n pretty!

Sent from my Transformer TF101
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Spidey01:
and blue!
[Eee Pad Transformer General] MightyMackinac:
Thread resurrection! Looking into throwing in a 1TB 9mm WD HDD and the extra battery. With the switch, shipping back, and some money for your time, how does $200 sound?
[Eee Pad Transformer General] yalkowni:
One word LOL
[Eee Pad Transformer General] MightyMackinac:
What's so funny?

I'm buying the HDD. I have no idea how much the extra battery costs. Besides the man deserves to be payed for this awesome service. If the dock came stock like this, then I would have certainly payed out the nose for it.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Goatshocker:
Fix the images! QQ
[Eee Pad Transformer General] kah00na:
Can someone repost the pictures or a PDF that has them in it? I just found this thread after having my tf101 for 2 months. I worked for a week off my tablet and I would have loved to have more of my movie and mp3 collection with me!

*** update ***

Nevermind, I found his video on youtube. I'd post a link, but I haven't posted enough yet.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] zAlbee:
Epic thread. Just read it all. :good:

https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/38673648/1/mods?h=0122c8#gallery:12 Here's a gallery that the OP posted earlier. Cheers.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] JoHnNy08PL:
[MENTION=4629065]zAlbee[/MENTION] [MENTION=2844880]goodintentions[/MENTION]

Could somebody repost images? All links are dead :/
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
My apology. I've switched career to engineering and about a year ago got hired by an engineering firm. Been working nonstop. Actually something I love to do and get paid for it. Way better than when I was working in technology. Anyway, Without thinking about it, I did a clean house with my Dropbox account. those pictures are gone forever. I had no idea people are still interested.

I have also switched completely to windows devices. Windows phone, windows tablet, etc. My company recently wanted to make the move of buying everyone a tablet. They asked for my recommendation, and I said the Ms surface. They got a couple surface 2's right now using everyday. I'm also working on a software for them. Anyway, the point is I've jumped ship. No more android.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] salbalboa:
I installed a ssd and didn't need to split the batteries just had to move them around. I still use my tf for long trips. And all is still well.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] zAlbee:
Sorry, I don't have a copy. :/

Personally, 16 + 32 GB microSD is more than enough for me to save my system backups and episodes of whichever show I'm watching at the moment -- you don't need your entire video library at all times, right? Also, I just took apart my transformer today to fix the power button (finally), following one of the videos on YouTube. It wasn't hard, just kind of annoying to pry the frame off (I used an old credit card). No plans to replace this baby yet :).

Sent from my Transformer TF101 running 4.2.2 (KatKiss)
[Eee Pad Transformer General] finalhit:
you should have it do random reads for maximum spinage. [not a word, i know :P] or is it a SSD? [although it's probably not a 500 GB SSD]
[Eee Pad Transformer General] ryan stewart:
Oh dear god. That is awesome.

Heat shouldnt be a factor, only power. Most ultraportables,media players, etc are cramming drives into even smaller spaces and I have yet to see one with a heat sync or cooling apparatus of any kind. Those even have to put the SOC next to the HD, there is nothing but the batteries in the dock so there isnt anything else to soak the HD in heat.

Being said Id love to see it done with an SSD, Id even consider doing it myself but I would want instructions. Throw a 128SSD in there and you have a bombproof storage expansion that does turn it into a netbook. I dont even need super speed SSD since its only a storage medium.

Also they have some 1.8" drives, if you could run the same USB controller with a ZIF connector you would have a bit more space, maybe fit another battery pack (although that is the mod that is scary).
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
I already have another battery pack. And yes, if I use ssd I could probably throw in another battery pack. But the problem is $$$. Have you any idea how much those things cost? Plant me a money tree and I'll consider using ssd next time :p

But seriously, this is a relatively simple operation. But you need all 3 of these things:

(1) Bravery. This mod ain't for the faint of heart. You need to be willing to take risks.

(2) Soldering skills! All soldering places are smaller than the tip of your finger. In fact, they are as small as a pinhead. If you can't solder something as small as a pinhead, you can forget about this mod.

(3) An elementary understanding of how wirings work. This mod needs you to unsolder some things and resolder them to reposition their locations. When I say elementary understanding of how wirings work, I mean if something originally connects between point A and B, after you reposition them points A and B must still be connected after the resoldering.

But yes, I can see how using an ssd is infinitely better. Again, I was really really looking at ssd. But it's just too steep for my pockets. This 500 gb drive costs me $40. An ssd is around $1000.00. I stayed in school just long enough to learn the difference between ≤ and ≥ signs.

Added by edit.

There is also a switch in the dock that controls the dock battery. If you accidently knock the switch the battery will stop working. Just an example of the kind of details you need to pay attention to to do this mod.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] ryan stewart:
Not expecting a 500gb SSD. Right now there are about 100GB range SSDs going for about $2 per gig, still more than $40 but not $1000. The $1000 ones are the NAND flash ones that push 4gb/s, you arent getting that through USB2 anyway.

Given the amount of space and that you obviously found a back way into the USB bus this mod definitely has a lot of potential.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Lawliet:
This is amazing! Maybe you can start a shop to help people mod their things lol :D
[Eee Pad Transformer General] asdfuogh:
Or wait for sttram to develop a little more and strap it full of that!
[Eee Pad Transformer General] RAMBO29:
Congrats and any views on battery life after modification/adding on off button would be great.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Bob Smith42:
Nice. Adding physical storage is a great improvement of the dock.

I like the idea of a physically smaller hard drive, e.g. 1.8 inch, both for space savings and likely lower power requirements. Of course, most SSD have lower power requirements at high cost. But, your mod is good because you keep it simple and inexpensive.

I think the two 4000mAh 7.4v battery packs I mentioned in the other post would also fit in your mod. Once I have results I will let you know details.

We will know how well it works depending on your power utilization results.

PS: Which battery widget do you use?
[Eee Pad Transformer General] darkhawkff:
Honestly I don't understand why you didn't just get a smaller SSD. They make 48 gb drives that are 1.8" with USB built in. (search Newegg.com for Wintec Filemate) One of those woud be sufficient, draw less power, and give you much more space. I've been considering this mod myself, being a more than adept electrical engineer. My real issue is I don't care to lose a USB port externally. I haven't taken my dock apart, since I would prefer to send it back for RMA before attempting this mod. Needless to say, a job well done. I'm looking forward to doing this myself sometime soon.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] ExploreMN:
Holy crap! Just curious, do you still get 16 hours while powering the HD? I would guess you would lose some of the battery life with that.

Awesome job though! I think if they threw an HD in this thing from the start they would sell a lot more of them.

Also, how is the heat with the battery and the HD mushed together like that? Did you consider an SSD instead?
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Rackers:
Fantastic job, I do not have the brains or the bravery to try that so my hat goes off to you. I'd be interested to see what effect (if substantial enough) this mod would have on battery life. If you are seeing a minimal difference then +1.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] knoxploration:
I'm wondering if you could fit a small SSD and a dismantled two-port USB hub in there, so you can retain the external USB port too (just piggyback it off the hub). Obviously you'd be likely to have issues with anything that draws too much power, since the hub and SSD would already be drawing a fair bit off the single USB port, but it could still be useful for low-power or externally-powered devices...

With the OP's HDD, my concern re: the heat issue others have mentioned would be during a charge cycle from a flat battery, with the tablet powered up and running, and the drive spun up (say, watching a movie, or something). Depending on where the temperature sensor(s) are that monitor battery status during charging, I could easily see this causing a fire, and you really don't want to see a LiPo battery fire (although I'm sure the OP is aware of all this, and weighed the risk for himself).
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
I've been using the tablet all day. The dock is at 32% and the tablet is at 92%. Looks pretty good to me as far as battery life is concern. This friday I will have some time off. I will leave the docked tablet on with full brightness on all day and see how long it will last. I will even play a movie or two during the test phase. I'll give you guys all the number.

As far as heating goes, I have not notice any heat coming from the dock at all.

Again, I took the hard drive out of an air tight plastic outer casing and a pretty tight inner metal casing. I then wrapped the hard drive in electrical tape. Should I take out the tape and just let the thing exposed? Will this help with the heat if it's an issue?

About putting in another usb thing to save the outer one, why the hell didn't I think of that? I will make the mod this weekend.

I'm still happy I decided to use a hdd instead of ssd. Just looked on amazon. a 48 gb ssd costs $105. My 500 gb hdd was $40. I'm ot made of money. I waited until I was able to get the transformer for $255 (lots of discounts and stuff). I really don't want to spend more than I have to on gadgets.

Why did I put in a hard drive? Because I wanted to replace my laptop permanently. I had the acer iconia for 3 months prior and all those 3 months I never once turned on my laptop. Now that I have switched to the TF with keyboard dock, I can't imagine having to use my laptop again.

But what about big applications like autocad and programming, you ask? That's what my desktop with the 24" screen is for.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] knoxploration:
I would imagine your main issue, if any, will be with heat from the batteries charging affecting the hard drive, or more likely, heat from the hard drive afecting the battery charging process. (If the latter, hopefully the temp sensor in the battery will be located correctly to pick this up and shut charging off until the battery cools.)

I doubt the electrical tape will be a *huge* temperature insulator, but at the same time, unless it's needed to shield a possible short circuit or hold things in place, I probably wouldn't be adding any unneeded insulators...

Glad I could give you an idea! ;-)
[Eee Pad Transformer General] markp1989:
Wow good work :)

I saw a few dis assembly pics a few weeks ago and when stock it looked pretty mad in there.

This was the one mod I was hoping i I would see, out of my skill range, not to mention that I pretty much skinted my self buying the transformer pad and I would probably end up damaging my self if i went near those cells with a soldering iron.

one question, are you able to spin down the drive its not being accessed? or does it stay running whenever the tablet is on?

also, you mentioned that the drive was wrapped in insulation tape, does it cover the "hole" on the drive that i think is used to keep the air pressure the same inside as out? I have heard if blocked it may cause problems.

looking fw to seeing the addition of a USB hub to recover the other port :)
[Eee Pad Transformer General] darkhawkff:
I understand your reasoning for the cheaper hard drive, but to that same end, $105 is still much cheaper than the $1000 you were thinking. It's still a helluvalot cheaper than the $500 ones you can get with 200 gb of space. The reality of the matter, the only reason you'd want 500gb is if you want to take alot of media with you. Outside of media, there's no real reason to have 500 gb of space.

Either way, like I said before. I admire the fact that you did this before I did. It's still an awesome mod, and I am envious, even if you didn't do it the way I would have. :D
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
I'm actually toying with the idea of providing this service of adding on the hard drive for a moderate fee. Throughout my exploration, I actually improved on the technique and I'm pretty sure I can do it with relative ease next time around. Still toying with this idea...

Before I put in the hard drive, I did many tests to see when it would run. In order for the hard drive to run, ALL of the following conditions must be met.

(1) Tablet is docked.

(2) Tablet is on.

(3) Tablet is not sleeping.

In other words, closing the tablet-laptop hybrid will turn off the hard drive.

Another thing is this hard drive has a program inside it that will shut it off automatically if it is not accessed for a while. So, say I'm using my docked tablet for an hour or more without accessing the hard drive. The hard drive will turn itself off automatically.

I don't know, but I am one dinner away from opening up the dock and removing all the electrical tape I put around the hard drive.

Here's the thing. I don't have one readily available.

Hey electrical engineers, how do I connect a usb hub inside the dock to recover my external usb? Do I need to connect it to the battery or whatnot? Again, I'm a civil engineer.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
You mean jealous? :D

I commute each day to and from that adds up to 2 hours sitting on the train. ANIME!

Added by edit.

By the way, take a look at the picture attached.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] SwiftLegend:
Please consider adding in HD's for people for a price. I think it'd be reasonable to charge $50-$$$ for the mod. Obviously the cost of the drive itself, extra battery, and usb hub(?) would also be taken into account. I'd love to just have a 30GB SSD to install Ubuntu on.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Bob Smith42:
We need to test what happens with an USB hub plugged into the USB port on the dock. Does it actually work as a hub on Android?
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Bob Smith42:
I am not an EE, but it is easy. First test a hub works in the USB socket.

Cut the 2 signal lines to one USB port. You connect the hub host D+ and D- signal lines to the USB port signal lines on the motherboard. You connect the +5v and ground on the hub directly to good spots on the motherboard. From the client side of the hub you connect to the USB socket, that you earlier cut away. The trick is twisting (spin) the signal lines a couple times per inch which prevents signal loss.

This method should give you at least two or three extra USB ports (if it works) but Android needs to recognize all of them.

Good luck.

PS: There are many inexpensive USB hubs on dealextreme.com and this trick was play many times on the eee pc line a few years ago. ;)
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Killa357:
Great work! I know it has already been said, but I would be curious to know what the power consumption is with that hard drive. Also curious to see how it would do with a SSD. :D
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Just took out the all the tape clothing the hard drive.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] knoxploration:
Buy one that's not externally-powered, then you needn't worry about hooking up to batteries. Plenty (could be most, I have no idea) of 2-port hubs are unpowered, quite likely not much more than a Y-cable inside I'm guessing.

Good idea (and a good catch on the air pressure thing by whomever mentioned that, if you ever travel by air -- that could've caused major issues.)
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
I just ordered a usb on/off switch.

http://www.coolerguys.com/cgusbonoff.html

The idea is I will have the option to switch on or off the hard drive. When it is on, the usb port will not be usable. When it's off, the usb port will be usable.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] Underwater Mike:
Great idea, and I think removing the tape was a smart move. Despite the fact that it's not terribly thick, it's still more of an insulator than the metal casing would have been.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
I am currently testing the battery life. Started off fully charged both tablet and dock. Set the brightness to full. Have a timer running down from 16 hours. So far, 2 hours have passed. No noticable heat coming from the dock. Just checked the hdd. Still working 5 by 5.
[Eee Pad Transformer General] goodintentions:
Progress report

It's only been a couple hours but based on the % of battery so far I estimate that the addition of a hard drive and keeping it on all the time will kill 1 hour of battery. So, instead of the famed 16 hours I now get about 14-15 hour.

It's still a kick-ass battery life, though.