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Need 5.25" bay USB recepticle for 3.5" HD

N

Nolonemo

Member
I think I've seen these, but can't locate them.... A recepticle for 3.5" hard drives that fits into a 5.25" drive bay, and connects to a USB header on the mobo and takes power from the mobo's power harness. It has a slot in the front that you shove a bare 3.5" hard drive into, turning the HD into a USB drive. You can just push and pull the HD in and out, I think they are hot swappable.

Do these exist? Anyone have a link? Thanks.

Note 1: I am not talking about IDE removable hard drive trays, which I have. On my mobo, anyway, if I swap HD trays (with power off of course), the bios self-configures, which screws up my HD boot sequence, requiring me to go into the BIOS and fix it with each swap

Note 2: This is to use with a number of drives that are used of for off-site storage of backups. I'd rather not spend the $$ for a separate external enclosure for each drive. I have found some IDE to USB rackmounts, but don't want to have to spend the money for a tray for each of the drives.

I may end up using one of the USB to IDE cables that come with a power supply that plugs directly into the HD, but I'd prefer the more elegant solution I've described.
 
So far my solution seems to be to get a USB to IDE adaptor and plug that into the IDE rackmount bay inserts that I have and just use my existing IDE rackmount HD trays.

Still would like to find out where that thing I saw was. I've done a bunch of googling, but still haven't turned it up.
 
Originally posted by: Nolonemo
So far my solution seems to be to get a USB to IDE adaptor and plug that into the IDE rackmount bay inserts that I have and just use my existing IDE rackmount HD trays.

Still would like to find out where that thing I saw was. I've done a bunch of googling, but still haven't turned it up.
Click to expand...

I've never heard of such a thing, but I would do what you suggested in post #2
 
You could get a SATA PCI card that supports hot swap (unless your motherboard already has them) and get something like this.

Kingwin's full SATA Rack offerings

I've got one working with my NF7-S v2.0. I don't know if the onboard SATA qualifies as fully hot-swap capable though. The system locks for about 3 seconds when I switch on the removable drive, but then it works just fine. Nothing ever shows up in Safely Remove Hardware, so I'm guessing that Windows doesn't think that this SATA setup is "removable storage". I just keep the write cache turned off for the drives, and I'm careful not to remove the drive when data's being written to it. This could be tempting fate though, I'm not entirely sure. No problems yet though.
 
Thanks for replies, but I'm sure I did see it, I remember it struck me that it was a great idea, because I have a bunch of 80GB bare drives sitting around, and you could just jam them in and out of the "enclosure" just like you do with a CF card and a front panel card reader. And yet, at this point, I've spent well over an hour scouring the web without turning one up.

For those who care, I can't just swap out IDE rack mounts because I'm booting off an SATA drive, so I had to manually set the HD boot sequence in the bios. Adding or removing a drive makes the BIOS go back to the default HD boot sequence which points to IDE0 as the default.

But like I said, I'll use a IDE-USB cable between my existing IDE rackmounts and the mobo, so that should solve my problem.

It's just that the idea of plugging 3.5"drives into and out of my box like a CF card really appeals to me....

 
I'm sure it had to be a mobile drive rack rigged with one of those converter cables. That's what I use for my external USB drive. You have to get a rack that cuts power from the drive or the interface will get confused. A microswitch could be added to any mobile rack that has the mechanical lock but lacks the power cutoff switch.

But who knows, there may be a mobile rack with an integrated converter. I see Newegg has a Kingwin model that uses notebook drives (mounts in a 3.5" external drive bay (FDD)) and connects to USB internally or externally. It also has a 4-port USB hub in it. Check their web site - they may have 3.5 to 5" to USB that you want. Newegg seldom carries the full line of any company.

.bh.
 
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