Hiya, I was considering adding either a floppy and/or hard drive into a project I'm working on, and since either requires 12v to run the motors, I got to wondering about something. Are the logic and motor components of such a drive totally isolated from one another? I mean, if I want to power the logic board of a drive from the power source of the project itself, but I want to power the motor from an independent external source, is this possible without frying the other side? One would think this would be the case, but I thought it's best to confirm before I start sticking things together!
Also, in the event I might decide to use compact flash (via a CF to IDE adapter) in place of a hard drive, would one even have to power the motor side, or just simply send standard 5v to the logic side?