So the other day with the massive help of Lucas and his Dad we modded a humble fallout 3 lunchbox into a hard drive enclosure.  :)

Time required: ~ 3 hours? Less if you’re actually prepared. 

Difficulty: Easy. As long as you have the tools. 

Materials: 

1 X Sata controller extracted from a Seagate Extreme Desktop 1tb HDD 

1 X metal enclosure hard drive cage also from Seagate external drive case 

1 X 1tb 32mb cache 7200rpm Samsung HDD from my old computer 

1 X ac adaptor 

1 X Lunchbox (in this case, its the one from the fo3 limited ed) 

1 X Roll of Duct tape 

2 X cable ties 

1 X piece of Styrofoam 

+ Various cutting implements. 

=================== 

Steps: 

Cut a piece of Styrofoam to shape, for this, we used some of the Styrofoam Lucas had from his Edifier 5.1’s. When cut into shape and forced in towards the end of the assembly, it forms a nice base for the hard drive to sit on when it gets strapped in using the cable ties. While you COULD use glue, as we had originally planned, this would virtually make it messy/impossible to remove the hard drive should it need to be fixed/upgraded. In addition, when the case is opened, the cable ties serve as a prop to allow air to get into the case. 

Using the external case, we traced out the outline, we decided it was easier to just cut out a straight rectangle and force the SATA controller through using another rectangular piece of foam to force it out. This also served to keep the hard drive from slipping around when plugging various cables in. 

A drill was used to make initial holes then aviation scissors were used to cut the hole to size. Originally we were going to sand back the SHARP edges due to safety concerns then after playing around with different ideas, it was ultimately chosen to use tape to finish off the effect. This not only made it look neater, but also adds to a fallout-y effect. 

Next, a drill was used to open a hole in the top of the case to allow the led that was attached to the sata controller via a little power cable to be attached and held in place with duct tape (not pictured).  

Finally, the hard drive is strapped to the foam via cable ties and placed in. Another piece of foam is used to wedge the hard drive hard against the opening. 

Note also, the AC adaptor could actually be disassembled and placed inside the box neatly. Perfect for lan parties. The connections available on this model are: firewire, esata and usb 2.0

So what do you guys think? If you decide to give it a go or have any questions, I’d love to hear from you :)  If you decide to post this somewhere else other than tumblr, link back to this page.

Again, massive thanks to Lucas and his dad for their time, tools, attention to detail and expertise. This wouldn’t have been possible without them.