Scroll Tablet PC | Scroll Excel Tablet Forum

hi all.
i spotted this potential question while lurking in another thread, so i thought a new topic was in order where we can all share which products we've found to work with our scrolls and hopefully give people the advice they were looking for. i realise i may be wrong but these are my findings to share:

the scroll appears to use USB 1.1 (going by the terrible transfer speeds )
i've used an old IBM Travelstar 40gb 2.5" IDE laptop hard drive from my old packard bell (i overclocked it too far and it died a horrible death ) mostly for carting around music between home and the car. this drive sits in a cheap ebay drive caddy.

the reason it works?

the output voltage of the scroll on the usb host is 5v 500mah (standard usb 1.1 spec)*** i realise that the scroll can charge over the 'main' usb socket but can it output? or is it just charging one-way and data transfer?
only some laptop drives are capable of just having 500mah to play with so they can be powered DIRECTLY from the scroll without external power adapters. some very old laptop drives ive found seem to be 1000mah, as also most of the more recent ones are too. its a question of getting one from a reputable place where you can get detailed information about the product before you buy! as for SATA laptop drives...i've no idea but i'll leave that upto you good people to find out!

in summary a 2.5" hard drive with a power consumption of 500mah should be all you need, if you can find one...


i feel abit like Justin Long in DieHard 4.0, carrying around that little bag full of tricks

*** im under the impression that USB 2.0 also carries 500mah hence why almost all USB 2.0 enclosures will come with a 'Y' cable or similar attempt to get the extra power needed for the larger/more powerfull drives today...but almost all USB sticks/pendrives are backwards compatible and capable of running on just 500mah (even the huge capacity ones)***

should also add, i have a budget USB2.0 4gb flash drive for transferring apps etc and it works perfectly

2.5" Drives consume 350mA on average (And yes, USB also supplies upto 500mA as it's the data spec, not the power spec that changes between 1.1 and 2.0)
The scroll is usb 1.1 and can supply 500mA on the Host port (Otherwise Lasermice, etc wouldn't work with it)
I'm just currently modding a 32 Gig OCZ Onyx Solid State Drive to "Install" into my scroll, and will do a how-to along with pics (ooh) When it's completed.

not all of them, a quick browse on some 'well known' retail sites has returned some rather disheartening results...the lowest capacity drive i found (new) was 80gb, delving into the manafactures spec's shows its 'initial spin-up' consumption at bang on 1000mah with an idle consumption of 600mah and read/write activity consumption around 850mah. that was just a quick browse, and rightly so, not all drives would be like that, hence my previous post, if people know to look for a 500mah max. drive then they wont need an extra cable/power source whilst on the move

built-in extra flash storage was exactly what i was thinking of at 6a.m this morning lol!
im not brave enough to open up my scroll yet, but am eagerly awaiting your successful outcome and write-up!!

Yeah sorry, I did mean to say "most" or "average" as I'm looking at 5 different drives form Solid State to various spare 2.5" drives I have in my "Could be useful" box

it has to be solid state really, potential smaller size and durability.
my 'could-be-useful' box is actually the spare bedroom

LOL I have 3 rooms of that (which is migrating slowly to a 4th)

I've got an old IBM Travelstar 30Gb which comes from an Apple machine judging by the logo on it. It's wiped and prepped for install to an IBM R40e but doesn't fit cos of 4 metal lugs on the outside which prevent it fitting into the slot.

Thanks for mentioning this, might well give it a try.

and don't forget to post up your results!

I have a seagate external hard drive like http://bit.ly/gmYTia and it works fine with the scroll's host port without the need for external power