Apple Disk ][ - Reborn

The Concept

I'm slowly moving to an all mac/linux environment at home, consisting of a macbook air, a hackintosh and an old mini.  I wanted some portable storage that looked nice, wasn't your typical WD MyBook (bad reviews...) and was...welp interesting!

Not Interesting Enough

Trolled around www.ebay.com for vintage apple stuff I found her.  The beautiful, heavy, Apple Disk ][.  I needed this to work.

The Parts

1 x Apple Disk ][  -  Does not need to work!

2 x Hard Drives  -  I went with 2 x 2TB WD Red 

1 x 'Hard Drive Dock'  -  I bought the 'Syba USB 3.0 Dual Hard Drive SATA II Docking Station'

2 x 22 Pin SATA Cables  -  You will need female to male <--Like these

Misc  :  Rubber grommets or sheet, foam squares, hot glue.

The Build

Pretty straight forward.  The old apple disks are simple to take apart (various sized philips screwdrivers are your friend).  Strip it down to the shell.

Pop the top off and reveal the sweet analog card

Now take apart your harddrive dock and get the bare board out.  Your size/shape may vary but don't go for an OMG humungous dock.

Syba Dock Board Exposed

Get the bottom half of the Apple Disk ][, your dock board, rubber, and hot glue and get to work.  First we need to attach the board to the back of the Disk ][ bottom shell.  Using rubber grommets or a rubber sheet, first attach rubber to the 4 corners of the board and then board to the vertical side of the shell.  I used the sheet as a shim to ensure the board did not touch the shell on the bottom.

Ghetto-licious

Next break out your foam and hardrives.  The foam helps in 2 ways, one it will allow for spacing between the drives for air flow.  Second it will provide vibration isolation to reduce noise.  Let the stacking begin.

Note first SATA extension cable installed.

And second SATA extension cable installed

Add foam to the top drive and compress as necessary.  You want a nice tight fit to avoid too much horizontal motion.

JENGA!

Now for the dry fit

Peekaboo!

The Rest

Everything afterwards is easy peasy.  Ensure everything powers on, format drives as you please.  I wanted a large JBOD as I wasn't using these drives as backups, just mass semi portable storage.  Using this guide I created my 4TB JBOD and it sure is pretty.

What's Left

There are still some cosmetic items to take care of. 

External cabling.  There is already a gap in the back shell that I plan on dremeling (carefully) out to accomodate the power and USB 3.0 cable. 

Also going to secure the front plate and maybe even get the integrated red LED to show disk activity.

So, could I have gotten a JBOD 4 TB disk cheaper, easier, and cheaper?  Sure...but man is she gorgeous.