Removable Hard Drive Enclosures

[callbar]

Hi,
I was thinking of trying out a removable HDD caddie to enable me to easily swap HDDs on my PC, as a convenient way to separate multiple OSes and Apps on my system.

Anyone installed a removable HDD enclosure? Any recommendations or problems I should know about?

I have located a DataSwap IDE Removable Hard Drive Enclosure from ANTEC :
h**p://www.antec-inc.com/product/datastorage/swap.html

Anyone already have experience with this product, and are there any better ones on the market?

Many Thanks.

 

[SloppyB]

I tried this a while ago with high-speed SCSI drives and it didn?t work out too well for me. I think that the problem was the data transfer between the connectors didn?t agree with SCSI. I ended up making a switch to turn one drive off and the other on (or the other way around). This works very well?however, I don?t know if it would work with IDE drives.

 

[esung]

You'll need to check whether the enclosure is ATA-66/100 capable.. the cheap enclosure I used is not, because the interal connetor that connect from the IDE drive to the external connector to the rack has only 40 pin ribbons. you'll need to find those that has 80 pin ribbons all the way. (probalby cost some more... whether it's the cost or they just want to make money).

Another big thing is heat. 7200rpm in a closed enclosure without any fan could be real hot.. I end up opening the top and bottom cover so my drives could breath. but you can get the expensive ones that has fans (which is desirable, but I'm too cheap).

and one thing, not all the drive enclosure will be interchangable, so
if you decided to use this particular type, get multiple of them so you know that it'll be interchangable. get couple more internal box if you can get them since it'll be cheaper just get the internal enclosure. I have about 6 set plus 4 more internal enclosures.. since I swap and mount drives quite a lot.