HOT: Removable IDE Drive Enclosure $6.95 + shipping

[funnyfenix]

got 5 too

 

[WiseOldMan]

Originally posted by: Devistater

Originally posted by: TheDon
I thought XP checked the hardware on the system looking for significant differences. If I moved my drive from one computer to another, wouldn't I have to re-register XP? This might not work for me anyway since I run a RAID controller.

XP does check the hardware when it boots up, and yeah, I wouldn't do it on a boot drive. Data drive would be fine though. If you dont have a data drive.... well pick one up, they are dang cheap

Originally posted by: WiseOldMan
I'm using 4 of these $6.95 ones with my Win2000 systems. They ARE hot swappable but
you need to detect for them in Device Manager after swapping drives. The only problem is that
playing back AVI video store on them doesn't run smooth.

These $6.95 ones actually worked better at hot-swapping than the more expensive
aluminum model they sell.

Now, you realize what you are saying by hot swappable, right? Hot-swappable means that you can REMOVE the IDE drive while your comptuer is ON and RUNNING. Like a USB device. Hot means you can remove it and plug it back in while the power is on.

I dont think you can do that with these. Unplugging any IDE device (especially hard drives) while your computer is on is not exactly a good idea from my experiance.

But correct me if I'm wrong.

You're wrong. You can unplug and swap these while the system is running. This is possible for an IDE device because
there's a key to power them off and unlock them -- before you remove them. With IDE, the problem comes in, where you must
set one as master and the other as slave when using 2 of these on a system. If you use 2 of these removable enclosures,
then remove one of them, your system will hang every time. Only a reboot would fix it.
If you only have 1 removable enclosure installed, or have 2 installed but hot-swap both at a time.. then you're ok.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: WiseOldMan

Originally posted by: db
Anybody have screaming fans from these (older) ones?
Looking for ball-bearing replacements....

WiseOldMan are you saying you had problems playing back avi *after* swapped drive detection? Any problem if no swap?

db, it's not that the avi movies don't play it's just that the movies don't run smoothly. The same AVI movies would play
beautifully (without any 1/2-seconds stalled every few seconds). This happened whether the drives were attached before
or after boot-up. My hard drives (in the removable cages) are connected to IDE0 and IDE1 (I have RAID0 setup).
My Abit KG7-RAID mb supports ultra ATA-100 and I'm using 7200RPM hard drives. I think but the swappable cages' circuit board and
connector/cable must have slowed down the data stream -- reducing a hard drive's Ultra ATA-100/133 performance down
to Ultra ATA-33/66.

Sounds like you are getting UDMA CRC data errors, causing re-transmits. Could be the extra cabling in the racks, could be noise in your computer system in general, could be a lot of things. Do you use rounded or extra-length cables as well? Those would probably be a no-no for this situation. Could depend on the drives used as well.

As for the hot-swappability of these and other racks: There are basically three components needed. One is the ability of these racks to cleanly cut off from the IDE bus and power, usually through a keyswitch and some circuitry. Two and three are the ability of the IDE host-adaptor controller chip and the software drivers for it, to be able to handle the hot-swap operation. I know that most (all?) Promise controller chipsets can handle it, as Promise sells a bundle that includes hot-swap-capable removable racks along with some of their controllers and appropriate driver software. I don't know if most integrated mobo chipsets can handle hot-swapping, and certainly the MS built-in IDE drivers, at least for Win9x, couldn't handle it either. Hopefully the ones in W2K and XP have been upgraded to be able to do so.

I would suggest that before attempting a hot-swap, for those that want to try this with standard MS drivers on their mobo chipset, to go into Device Manager and actually delete the drive that you are going to remove. (Make sure that there are no open Explorer windows or open files on any volume that that drive contains.) Then use the key to turn off the drive in the rack, remove, swap in new drive, turn key to power-on, and then select Refresh in Device Manager, it should re-detect the drive. I would also suggest only running a single drive per IDE port, or if you must run two, use cable-select jumper settings, and a cable-select cable. (All 80-wire IDE cables should be cable-select capable.) It might also be a nice idea to compile a list somewhere, of which mobo IDE chipsets, which drivers, and which racks, allow successful hot-swap operations.

 

[PapaSurf]

Can I use my rounded cables with one of these bays? I am talking about how the cable fits through the enclosure.

Thanks!

 

[jagilbertvt]

PapaSmurf: rounded cables shouldn't be a problem, as it doesnt actually go through the enclosure, it just attaches to the rear of it, like on a regular drive.

 

[higgins]

For near-idiots like myself, how hard are these to install the first time??? I'm looking to regularly back up my office computer a little more effectively than the 200MB of network space my MIS guys allow me. I would be nice to back up my gigbyte email archive more than once a month or so...To judge my technical abilities, it just took me 20 minutes-plus to install memory in a office mate's desktop (some of you folks can do that in 3 minutes...)

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: higgins
For near-idiots like myself, how hard are these to install the first time???

It's easy. The rack mounts like any 5 1/4" drive (like a CDR), and the drive, itself, is mounted in the slide-in trey. The only thing you have to watch is, some of these racks are a bit deep, so you will need a case having a free 5 1/4" bay with some depth behind it to avoid bumping into things like the power supply. Also, make sure the rack you buy is qualified for the speed of your drive (ATA-100/133, etc.)

I love being able to clone my 20 GB drive in about ten minutes.

One more reminder that most of the cheap versions I've seen of these aren't worth it because they break too easily.

 

[Devistater]

Originally posted by: WiseOldMan

You're wrong. You can unplug and swap these while the system is running. This is possible for an IDE device because
there's a key to power them off and unlock them -- before you remove them. With IDE, the problem comes in, where you must
set one as master and the other as slave when using 2 of these on a system. If you use 2 of these removable enclosures,
then remove one of them, your system will hang every time. Only a reboot would fix it.
If you only have 1 removable enclosure installed, or have 2 installed but hot-swap both at a time.. then you're ok.

I stand corrected then I was wrong, tell your sister you were right (from star wars).
I didn't think about a key/switch that would turn off power to the drive. Ok, that makes sense then. I was thinking it was just unplug and wham.

Actually, serial ATA is designed to be hot unplugable (no switch needed), which is something interesting. I want to see some more serial ATA drives come out with reviews.

 

[billtmore]

I also have a question for those that have this or something similar...I can only assume that when you slide it in or take it out the power and ide connect up automatically right??? I mean you dont have to touch the power cable or the ide cable in any way...I broke a pin one time and now I rarely screw around with plugging and unplugging stuff!!!!

 

[TheMouse]

I got a few of these from them... They do their job well and i would certainly order from compgeeks again. Just for fun, I booted up my computer and pulled the boot drive out.. and the computer ran off of what was in teh RAM for a while (10 minutes or so) befor I began getting errors.

 

[jagilbertvt]

Their is a standard computer key that'll lock/unlock (read: connect/disconnect the power) the drive. As many ppl say, IDE isn't designed for hotswapping, so you certainly use this "feature" at your own risk.

 

[NuclearFusi0n]

Originally posted by: WiseOldMan

Originally posted by: Devistater

Originally posted by: TheDon
I thought XP checked the hardware on the system looking for significant differences. If I moved my drive from one computer to another, wouldn't I have to re-register XP? This might not work for me anyway since I run a RAID controller.

XP does check the hardware when it boots up, and yeah, I wouldn't do it on a boot drive. Data drive would be fine though. If you dont have a data drive.... well pick one up, they are dang cheap

Originally posted by: WiseOldMan
I'm using 4 of these $6.95 ones with my Win2000 systems. They ARE hot swappable but
you need to detect for them in Device Manager after swapping drives. The only problem is that
playing back AVI video store on them doesn't run smooth.

These $6.95 ones actually worked better at hot-swapping than the more expensive
aluminum model they sell.

Now, you realize what you are saying by hot swappable, right? Hot-swappable means that you can REMOVE the IDE drive while your comptuer is ON and RUNNING. Like a USB device. Hot means you can remove it and plug it back in while the power is on.

I dont think you can do that with these. Unplugging any IDE device (especially hard drives) while your computer is on is not exactly a good idea from my experiance.

But correct me if I'm wrong.

You're wrong. You can unplug and swap these while the system is running. This is possible for an IDE device because
there's a key to power them off and unlock them -- before you remove them. With IDE, the problem comes in, where you must
set one as master and the other as slave when using 2 of these on a system. If you use 2 of these removable enclosures,
then remove one of them, your system will hang every time. Only a reboot would fix it.
If you only have 1 removable enclosure installed, or have 2 installed but hot-swap both at a time.. then you're ok.

I have my DVD-ROM set as master, my CD-RW set as slave, and I warm swap the DVD-ROM all the time for a different CD-RW drive --- works fine as long as i plug in the power correctly (i once tried to do it without looking and shorted it out )

 

[Ziptar]

So should I stay away from these if I run ATA133 drives and do LOTS of video (encode VCD/DVD) ??

 

[Jombo]

I picked up 3 of these sometime last week. and should be getting em in a day or two. also got the 32meg USB memory thing, so we'll see how they turn out.
had a hell of a time finding the right name for it, and didn't even think it'd make the hot deals list, but i guess there are a bunch o folks like me.

anyway i think having a mobile rack is cool if you have multi comps in different locations, so instead of buring stuff to a cd everytime I need to transport something, i'll just dump it into the extra hd. seems cool enough, hopefully i'd actually use it more than a couple times. (neat ideas don't really get much use)

Ziptar: as for using the rack for the encoder, i wouldn't do it simply because aren't those more or less dedicated for encoding anyway? and on top of everything else, i'd imagine you have another drive dedicated to data storage, so you can prob stick that data drive into the mobile rack to transport. at least that's what i would do. (if you did have an extra drive for storage)

another thing you can actually do with this is having different HDs for different situations, instead of having a dedicated gaming machine, just have one HD for gaming, w/ Win 9x, ME for gaming, and another drive w/ Win 2k for apps and such. swap, reboot, but i guess this made more sense a few years back than now.

 

[Jombo]

one more thing:
if you are buying more than one, try this:
put one in the cart, and when the cart shows up, you'll see the same mobile rack w/ a lower price tag of 6.29 or something.
put the lower priced one in the cart, and you can set the quanitity on those to however many you like at the 10% reduction price.

but it only works if you are buying at least one at the regular $6.95 price i'm not sure if this will still work, but it's worth a look.

 

[Silex]

I believe that the reason that these are hot-swappable is due to the fact that the enclosure connects to the tray using a sczi interface. I'm actually fiddlling with the idea of trying to use a sczi to db25 (parallel) to connect just the enclosure to my parallel port for quick file copying when one doesn't have an extra 5 1/4" bay open to shove a rack into. I will fill you all in later tonight regarding this and see if the cable that i bought will work for this.

 

[Silex]

Shameless BUMP & UPDATE...
I never tried it. Yup you heard me right. I know for a fact that hooking up an ide based hd to a parallel connection totally defeats the purpose of me wanting to transfer files to and from my hd. So back to the drawing board. For everyone who wants to know if it works, it probably does, I just can't verify the speed at the moment...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Silex
I believe that the reason that these are hot-swappable is due to the fact that the enclosure connects to the tray using a sczi interface. I'm actually fiddlling with the idea of trying to use a sczi to db25 (parallel) to connect just the enclosure to my parallel port for quick file copying when one doesn't have an extra 5 1/4" bay open to shove a rack into. I will fill you all in later tonight regarding this and see if the cable that i bought will work for this.

It is NOT a SCSI interface, it uses a similar Centronics-style connector though. Another thing, the wiring that each mfg uses to that connector, is unique, there is no standard. If you mix+match trays and racks from different companies, expect something to go up in smoke (and if it isn't the $20 rack, it will be your expensive HD). Likewise, if you try to wire that connector to the parallel port, you will be very surprised. You may fry your drive, or even your entire mobo. Don't try it. A much better investment would be a USB 2.0/1.1 or Firewire external HD enclosure. They even make them for parallel-port (I have one), but they are very archiaic and horrendously slow. The one I have, the newest drivers are for MS-DOS 5.0.

 

[Silex]

. I sure caused quite a comotion it seems. Well, on a side note, I didn't do anything, but this does mean I have to slightly alter my compgeeks order. Most tragic, but I guess sacrafices must be made. Thanks for the input.

Also, I don't see how using another brand's tray and enclosure between similar brands would fry the drive. I've never personally tried it before, but, everything on my current drive looks exactly the same and the placement of the fans and connections are exactly the same. Probably a generic brand.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Silex
. I sure caused quite a comotion it seems. Well, on a side note, I didn't do anything, but this does mean I have to slightly alter my compgeeks order. Most tragic, but I guess sacrafices must be made. Thanks for the input.

Also, I don't see how using another brand's tray and enclosure between similar brands would fry the drive. I've never personally tried it before, but, everything on my current drive looks exactly the same and the placement of the fans and connections are exactly the same. Probably a generic brand.

Please... just trust me on that one. I used to work for a reseller doing computer shows, and I've accidentally fried one (rack) myself trying that, before I knew the truth. A good seller will admit to you that all the companies use different wiring. (Some of them say "patent" on them, which is probably why - chainging the wiring may have allowed getting around the patent in some cases. Plus, there is no standard for the wiring, unlike the IDE interface cable, for example.)

Generally though, all of the racks from the SAME mfg can be interchanged, unless they say differently. All of the Lian-Li racks that I had ever sold to customers were, and we documented which ones would work with each other.

 

[tranceport]

Says in the manual that hotswapping is not supported on NT XP and ME..

Bummer. I was gonna get some but if XP doesn't support it

 

[petrek]

Would this be a good thing to get if I wanted to be able to run Linux as well but didn't want to have to have a dual boot system. Could I run XP on one drive and Linux on the other, and just swap them depending on which OS I wanted to use?

Thanks
D

 

[Vincent]

I bought two of these. They're just made of flimsy plastic but they seem to work ok. One issue is that some hard drives need to be grounded with the screws. But that doesn't happen with this plastic devices. Also, the plastic acts as an insulator. So if you're worried about cooling you hard drives, then I wouldn't recommend these.

I actually bought one because these have a fan and I wanted extra cooling for one of my hard drives. But I have to use something else for hard drive cooling.

 

[mindless1]

What's the fan/airflow like in these? What size, brand, bearing type or any other detail welcome.

Is fan easily removable if it fails?

If it's only 10mm deep, is there clearance for a 15 or 20 mm fan?

Does it have standard (which?) connector or soldered leads?

If the fan were removed, does it appear that a system with good exhaust airflow would still pull sufficient air through the enclosure's opening?

 

[hjlin]

Originally posted by: mindless1
What's the fan/airflow like in these? What size, brand, bearing type or any other detail welcome.

Is fan easily removable if it fails?

If it's only 10mm deep, is there clearance for a 15 or 20 mm fan?

Does it have standard (which?) connector or soldered leads?

If the fan were removed, does it appear that a system with good exhaust airflow would still pull sufficient air through the enclosure's opening?

I used this for many years to bring stuff between work and home (before laptop/internet). They are useful, and really cheap, no drivers to install. Since I plug/unplug them in/out everyday, and also drag the drive around with me everyday, after awhile, my drive died from excessive motion. Slow death, when it acts up, a kick would "fix" it. The cartridge which encloses the hard drive does get quite hot if the drives are left in for a long time. I think at one point, I removed the top/bottom plates so I could get more airflow. The other problem I had was with the cables/connection deteriated after a long while. Overall, it's just for convenience sake, I wouldn't put any mission critical stuff on the drive though.