The 4GB Ipod Mini Hitachi drive. This drive is based on the Compact Flash II standards so it is slightly bigger then your standard CF cards. Because it is a drive with Moveable parts, it consumes 3x more power then a CF card, but when purchased on eBay it is also almost 3 times cheaper then a 4GB CF card. I picked mine up for 44 bucks including shipping.
Oddly enough when I slapped it in my GBA using my M3 adapter I saw a screen like this. Didn't work. That's odd because I had did a preliminary check on my computer and it worked fine, and I copied some games to it. I figured it was a formatting issue so a formatted it a few times and no luck. . (Note: I have already fixed the issue when I took the picture, so this picture represents the approximate screen I saw)
Looking in the Disk Management I see this. Hmm there is an unpartitioned 30 so megs. this had to be causing my issues. Only one issue, Windows doesn't recognize removable devices as partitionable drives. No problem I thought, I have Partition Magic. WRONG, Partition Magic also doesn't allow deletion on removable devices. Damn its time to search the internet. (Note: I have already fixed the issue when I took the picture, so this picture represents the approximate screen I saw)
After searching a bunch of random forums, someone had mention they accidentally cut there 4GB drive size in half using a camera format utility and they used the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool to totally repartition and reformat the drive. God bless HP. All you do is select the drive and click start, Fucking awesome.
As you can see it now reads as just one large partition. You will notice in this picture how the delete partition never highlights, which is the purpose of this page. Nice now all I had to do was drag over my music movies and games and I'm in business.
And my theory was proven right, it now works perfectly fine. As you can see I'm playing Sword of Mana (which of course is a legal backed up copy of the game I already own) with out issue. I tested the battery life and I would say it's about 5 to 7 hours, the GBA Micro normally has a battery life of 10 to 13.
A box with out a picture. Here comes some theory.
Cameras detect their memory about the same way the M3 does, so this "hack" should work with cameras who normally wouldn't work with the Ipod drive. Issues, the drive is 4GB and thus it is partitioned in FAT32 so if your drive doesn't normally read FAT32 (above 2GB cards) then this hack won't be useful to you...maybe. 7Tool Partition Manager (a pay program) does allow you a lot more control and allows you two split the drive into two 2gb partitions that are formatted into FAT AKA FAT16. Now in more theory if you formatted the card to less then 2 gigs he camera may read it as a 2 gig card and let you use it. Just tossing that out there if anyone wants to play around with it.... back to breaking things.
Because the M3 adapter is made to only hold CF format 1 we are going to need help it take the new thicker sized card. For this we will need a screw driver and an Exacto Knife. I really only included this picture because I love my Exacto Knife.
Unscrew the two screws on the top of the adapter and then pull off the bottom. Place the microdrive even with the outside edge of the microdrive and use the knife to trace the size of the drive. The cut out that piece of plastic. "Ex.mike.xe" recommended trying to use heat and metal to try and thin down the plastic instead of cutting. In hindsight I'd probably try that first, but then again I do like to break shite.
What it looks like put back together.
Finished project. Awesome.