Many people would sacrifice that spare pocket in their bag (or preferrably suit pocket #2) for the ability to have 40Gb+ of USB storage that they could access from their Zaurus (preferrably with a real file system ).

I was pondering this a couple of days ago and set off down 'Tottenham Court Road' in London browsing the Electronics boutiques down there with a rather dubiuos hitlist of devices that I hadn't seen for sale much in this country..

1. CF 10/100 Ethernet adaptor (not in Tottenham Court Road.... ordered from Expansys finally).
2. Stowaway Full Size Keyboard - The USB one, no, NOT the Bluetooth one and not the IRDA one... I'm still working on the Bluetooth drivers OK! (glazed look from the sales person).
3. A Self Powered Disk Unit.... umm... NO not a bus powered drive... one with a battery.... yes I said a battery.... why? oh ok.... (he didn't really want to know why).

Item 3 I struck out on and was at that point extremely tempted by those rather sexy looking iPod Video units that come with 60Gb of storage (hmmm.... nice MP3, sits on your belt - don't need to revisit my tailor to get that extra heavy seam fitted to my suits). - I'm pretty sure that I could hack the partition table so I could fool the iPod into only using 20Gb and have a nice 40Gb ffs (BSD Fast File System) partition..that's not an issue...

Then a thought struck me...

iPods charge themselves through the USB port

This thankfully stopped me from buying another device without considering the consequences.

So... the big question is... do most of these USB OTG devices that are emerging that look perfect for the Zaurus start to stealthily draw from the Zaurus to charge themselves?? if so there is no advantage to them other than they will have enough juice onboard to spin themselves up.

Perhaps someone has done some testing... maybe some of the devices are configurable?

(anyway this isn't an invite for PM spams saying... so you want an external HDD then - we sell em... it's just a query over how Zaurus friendly they really are - the Gadget lust has cooled off on this device - I may buy something later if I decide that I actually need it rather than just want it).

-Andy

I have a battery powered usb case with a 40G disk. This is not a OTG one, it's an old case.

I can use for about 2 hours. Maybe in the future I replace the disk with a big CF card, and get more time.

Hi,
[...]

Some time ago I had a similar idea as using my ipod for backup purpose. After reading in different forums I rejected the idea because of the fact, that there are serious warnings to use an ipod for permanent disk usage. There shall be real problems due to the heat produced by the disc.
The ipod works normally in reading a certain amount of files from the disk to internal RAM, sendign the disk to sleep, reading again ...

Just a thought ...

Detlev

Now that's interesting... my partner is a Designer and she uses an iPod photo 60Gb unit that I bought her one Christmas to copy files from the office but often leaves the unit plugged in constantly and sometimes works on files stored on the iPod (long edit sessions of 80Mb PSDs etc.) no problems to date.

-Andy

the iriver plugs in as an external drive. It's my wife's so I dare not try it.

I can sympathise with that , however, you don't need to create a partition, just plug it in to see if it looks like it's charging... and which model iRiver is it?

-Andy

no I'm not worried about the content. I backup the HDD whenever I change something. I'm more worried about frying circuitry ( however slim the chance may be). I think it is the h320 (20GB model)

The 40GB USB OTG drive that we sell, http://www.figlabs.com/catalog/product_inf.../products_id/56
doesn't draw power from the Zaurus USB port. When connected to your Zaurus it is powered by it's own battery - much the same as when you plug it into a digital camera, it doesn't use the camera power.

Cheers

I just have 2 6000maH battery packs that i plug into devices as required, for eg my Dual layer DVD burner meaning i can read data off DVD,s on my zaurus without a power point

the advantage is that you can distribute the power to the devices that need it the downside is that you end up with cables everywhere and it dosent look as slick as an all in one unit.

i normally have the battery in one pocket and the power cable threaded to my other pocket by running it behind my belt, works well

My cheap Archos Jukebox Studio ($50 used) works just fine as an external drive for my SL-C1000. I don't like to use it for long periods of time, as the HD spins constantly in USB mode, so it really sucks up the batteries, but it'll be great for storing files I don't need to access often, but would like to have with me (as soon as I fill up the 4GB microdrive).

I haven't tested it, but I really doubt it uses any power from the Z. I usually copy music to it from my notebook, and the Jukebox batteries go down very quickly while I'm copying files (compared to use as an .mp3 player), so I'm pretty sure it isn't getting any power from the USB connection. It takes quite a bit of current to spin up a 2.5" HD -- probably more than 500 mA, which is all a USB device is allowed to draw.

It's USB 1.1, so it's kind of slow, but it was recognized by a stock Cacko 1.23 rom, so no additional drivers were needed. As a bonus, it's theoretically upgradable to 137GB, and runs the open source Rockbox firmware. You can find used ones on ebay for about $70 if you want the 20GB version, or as little as $30 if you're ok with a 6GB version.

David

I have a H120 iRiver, it works perfectly, I upgraded to a 30gb hdd, and no problems, got it off ebay for 200(usd)

Took a quick look at your drive. looks good, but are the batteries easily replaceable, more or less standard, or are they seriously built in? I ask because I'd hope the drive outlived the battery.

The battery is not replaceable without the use of a soldering iron .

Mark

I've mused about using an external HDD to turn the zaurus into an mp3 jukebox in the car - having looked at mini-itx and micro-itx PC to do this, the Z would make quite a good solution; the hdd could be powered from a DC-DC converter dropping the 12V down to 5V to power both the Z and the drive.

That is actually a very good idea, it's just soo expensive.