Review of the ISWAP 4 Channel Internal IDE Hot Swap Storage Subsystem
By flung
WhiningDog.NET
12/18/2002

1. Introduction

We’ve been reviewing mobile racks recently since I find myself swapping drives fairly regularly for testing purposes. Swapping drives isn't something relegated to testers/reviewers however - those who own or operate server(s) love the ability to change drives at will – especially if you can hot swap them. There are many power users who manipulate multiple OS's and like the expansion capability and the portability that racks provide. Now you can take designs normally found on a server rack system and bring it to your desktop. Enhance Technology sent us the ISWAP 4 Channel Internal IDE Hot Swap Storage Subsystem (Backplane) for review recently. That’s a pretty long name if you ask me so we’ll just reference this as the ISWAP 4 Channel. This is a housing assembly that can hold four 3.5” IDE drives in the space of 3 – 5.25” drive bays and allow for hot swapping of hard drives in a RAID configuration. Now granted – not everyone will need this housing assembly. In fact who needs to be able to hot swap four hard drives? But if you do, then check out this article.

1.1 Overview

Let’s take a look at the specifications of the ISWAP. Though you can not purchase these products directly from Enhance, you can contact them to find a suitable vendor to purchase from.

1.2 Packaging

Packaging wise, the ISWAP comes in a simple cardboard box with Styrofoam padding protecting its innards. The housing assembly is made of aluminum except for the front face which is plastic. This also holds true to the four drive carriers that slide into the front of the housing assembly. The ISWAP we will be reviewing today is in a standard PC beige color but Enhance Technology also has a black colored system available.

Top of the Box	Back of the box
The manual	and the insides

1.3 Contents

The ISWAP 4 Channel comes with
- 1 Housing Assembly for the four drives
- 4 Drive Carriers
- User Manual
- 22 Screws
- 40 pin / 80 wire ATA 100 IDE Cable Set

1.4 Interface

- Fits most 3.” And 1” height form factor ATA hard disk drives.
- Allows for standard ATA/IDE interfaces up to Ultra ATA/133. Includes four hard drive cables
- Built in Drive Status LED and Drive Activity LED indicators
- Built in FAN Status and Overheat LED indicators
- Built in FAN fail or over heat alarm buzzer

1.5 Specifications

- Dimensions: 239mm (D) x 148mm (W) x 128mm (H)
- Weight (w/o hard drives): approx. 2.2kg
- Operating Temperatures: 0C to 55C
- Non Operating Temperatures: -20C to 70C

1.6 Features

This housing assembly supports IDE RAID and Hot Swapping of the IDE drives on a RAID card. However since I am not testing the system with an IDE RAID card (did not get one from Enhance Tech), we won’t look into this aspect of the drive system. This drive supports standard IDE drives (Ultra ATA, DMA, and EIDE) and supports ATA/133 and lower.

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