The next stage was done when I came home from the US. Problem is. I had this thing shipped over and it didnt like it. I took the harddrive out and when I shook it I heard a rattling noise. I put the drive in my main rig and powered it up and it made an incredibly loud noise, it was unbearable but surprisngly enough it still worked so at least I hadn't lost all my data! So I quickly ordered a new hard drive, but needing 100gb and being on a low budget - I ordered an ebuyer refurbished drive.

When the drive turned up, I was amazed to see it was a re-badged WD. I was even more surprised to find it had exactly the same problems as the WD it was supposed to be replacing. I find this quite alarming and wonder if WD drives are very very susceptable to knocks, i.e even delivery is enough to damage them. I find it even more alarming when Surlyjoe told me of several he has had arrive in this condition. From this information alone i cannot conclude the WD drives are a problem product, but I know for a fact that I won't use one again. Their only saving grace (unlike IBM) is that when these drives take a crap, at least the data is still recoverable!

So I put a 40gb drive in their and starting work on modding this thing up!

The first thing I did was take the button panel and fill in those annoying lines that just don't suit the case. So I took some putty and then filed off the excess. Unfortunetly, when painted the groves just didn't go away. So I had to scrap the button panel and ended up making my own solution.

What I did was take a standard blanking plate and found two very small push buttons from an old VCR I stripped when Iwas 10 years old. I drilled two holes and then sprayed it in this rather nice metallic blue. This paint was bought from a model shop becuase model shop paint sticks to plastic better. I won't bore you with pictures of me spray painting and will instead show you the outcome.

I took the LED's from the old button panel and put them on the side next to the USB ports. I then using some Super Glue put the blanking plate into place. You can just about make out the very small, almost stealth buttons!

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