T43- using ultrabay CD drive as external CD drive

[ccarmac]

A little over a year ago I was issued a Thinkpad T43 here at work, and I love it! I consider it to be the best laptop I've ever used.

I hardly ever need the CD drive, so I keep it in my laptop case most of the time and use my Ultrabay to hold a second 100 GB hard drive. I would love to be able to quickly pull the CD drive out of the case, plug it up for a few minutes, and put it back without swapping it out of the Ultrabay.

Here is my question: Is there a cable available that would attach to the back of my Ultrabay CD drive and enable me to plug it into a USB port and use it as an external drive?

Any ideas or opinions? Thanks!

[jayeye]

you would need to take out the back panel of the CD to expose the more-or-less standard thin-profile-CD connector. For $10 you can get an adaptor that will convert it to a 3.5'' IDE connector, and then use an IDE-to-USB adaptor, probably another $20. By this time, you've spent $30, plus P&P, plus time to do this. Just get a cheap external USB drive and be done with it!

hope this helps,

/ji

[ccarmac]

I figured this was long shot, but at least it was worth a try.

I'll just keep the CD drive in my case and swap it into my Ultrabay when I need it.

Thanks for the response jayeye!