[geeks] WANTED: hard drive mobile racks

[Arno Kletzander]

shannon at widomaker.com (Charles Shannon Hendrix) wrote:
> On my PC, I use mobile HDD racks to allow me to swap the main boot
> drive.
> 
> ...
> 
> Anyone ever run one with no fan at all?

Yes, I use such a system on several of my PCs. The drawers and bays do not obviously state a maker (other than "Made in China" iirc), but they have a molded designation reading "HD-01B" on the back. Connection between bay and drawer is a 50-pin Amphenol connector carrying both data and power, the latter being controlled by a circular key switch in the faceplate of the bay part which also locks the drawer in place as long as the power is on.

I've not tried those with Ultra-anything drives (just plain IDE disks) so I don't know how they influence signal quality and I'd not put modernish drives with potential heat issues in them as there is no forced cooling (there are vent slots in the upper and lower shell of the tray but they're mostly obstructed if the bay is fitted between other drives).

I've also found the key switches on some of them to be "wiggly" and sporadically interrupt power to the drive, but this can be circumvented by shorting out the switch, if you don't usually change the drawer while the system is powered on (what few machines/operating systems will take anyway).


-- 
Arno Kletzander


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