By flung
09/17/2002
WhiningDog.NET

1. Introduction

Back in my days of validating the Intel 740 AGP graphics card, I worked with a number of operating systems all at once. This included testing against Windows 98, Windows 95, and Windows NT 4.0 at the time. Though we had plenty of hardware, it was often necessary to have several hard drives containing fresh images of these OS's to swap against. Removeable hard drive enclosures were life savers for us. We didn't have to constantly unscrew the screws to remove hard drives; we'd just slide out one hard drive for another and reboot. As we're setting up our test beds here at WhiningDog, we realized that having a removeable hard drive enclosure would be beneficial for our environment. So today, I'll talk a little bit about one such enclosure that I purchased at our local CompUSA dealer which goes by the name of the IDE Ultra DMA 66/100 Hard Disk Enclosure.

1.1 The specs:

- Supports most 3.5" and 2.5" hard disk drives with 1" height
- LED indicators for Power (Green) and Hard Disk Drive (Red)
- Convenient Push-in Handle
- Dimensions: 222 x 149 x 42mm
- Rack of fitted for a standard 5.25" half height drive bay
- Rated for up to 10,000 RPM drives

1.2 Packaging

Since this was a CompUSA/FMI product, the drive enclosure comes in a fairly no frills packaging. The rack is enclosed in some bubble wrap within the box and that's it. The packaging comes with some screws, a key for the lock on the rack and a thin manual.

CompUSA Box	Bubble Wrapped

Manual and keys

2. Setup

There's really not a whole lot to do in setting up a contraption such as this. In short - you pop a hard drive in there - connect the cables, install the rack and connect some more cables and you're all set! But here's some more details.

2.1 Installing a hard drive

Using this rack is a breeze. Just pull up on the front handle to remove the inner case of the mobile rack/receiving frame. Once the inner case is removed, you can remove the top cover by sliding it off while pressing down on a notch in the front. Uncovering the panel will show you the standard IDE connector as well as a molex cable to connect the hard drives with. For this test, I inserted my Western Digital 40GB 7200 RPM hard drive into the rack and connected the cables. I then screwed the hard drive in and put the top back over the inner case.

Connecting the hard drive to the receiving frame

2.2 Installing into a system

At this point, you're pretty much all set to go. All you'll need to do is install the mobile rack itself into a free half height bay and then treat the mobile rack as if it was an IDE drive by connecting the IDE cables from your motherboard to it. Of course you'll also have to connect the power from the P/S to get the drive working. Since I did not have a free case to actually insert this rack into, I did not actually install it as of yet. However, we did use it for our mohterboard testing placed external of a case - The drive enclosure worked out just fine.

3. Mobile Rack details

Though this is a relatively low priced product there are some nice things that you'll get with this mobile rack. Parts of the receiving frame and the inner case are made of aluminum which makes the internal chassis very strong. Howveer, it's unfortunate that the front panel is made of plastic. I wonder how many pulls and inserts the receiving frame can handle before it starts to fail - Hopefully I'll never have to witness that one. The overall enclosure feels fairly sturdy outside of the plastic front.

The rack comes with 2 fans installed to keep the hard drives cool. There is a fan in the front of the case and a fan in the rear of the case. The fans are fairly quiet so you normally will not hear the sounds when the rack is installed within a case.

One downside to this enclosure is the lack of support for Ultra DMA 133. Though that's still ok for most hard drives now, it won't be fine for future drives coming out in mass quantities.

Top view of the enclosure	Front view

4. Summary

For a no frills product, this hard drive enclosure works out fairly well. The only real major area of concern lies in the plastic components of the enclosure. One wonders if the plastic pieces, especially the small notches used to hold things in place, will wear out over time. If you find yourself constantly switching hard drives from a system, then consider getting a mobile rack. If you're a tester of PC equipment and use various OS's and hard drive images, then one of these enclosures/mobile racks will do wonders for you. These enclosures make removing a drive easy and helps speed the overall time it takes to get another hard drive installed. If you have any questions or comments, please post in our forums.

PROS:

Low price

Easy to install

Easy to use

Receiving frame is made of aluminum

CONS:

Plastic front bezel