An interesting compromise between internal and external hard disks is the removable
hard disk drive tray. A tray is installed into a standard PC case drive bay that allows regular internal hard disks to be
placed into it. You then can swap the internal hard disk with another one without opening
up the case, allowing you to use hard disks as a removable storage medium. In a way, the
concept is similar to the way a removable car stereo is designed. These trays are also
commonly called mobile racks, drive caddies and several other names.
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Shown above is the Kingwin KF-21-IPF mobile rack system
that I use on my
work desktop PC for backups and file archiving. The drive fits into the
removable tray (bottom) which fits into the stationary docking station (top). The
stationary portion is installed into a standard 5.25" drive bay and connected to
a regular IDE/ATA cable. On the right-hand side you can see the lock that
secures the tray in place, as well as indicator lights for power and drive activity. |
For certain applications, this are the ideal removable storage device: it uses regular
hard disks, which are very fast, highly reliable, very high capacity and very inexpensive
in terms of dollars per byte of storage. They can be used for backup purposes (secondary
to a regularly-installed standard internal hard disk).
Removable trays can also be used to allow the use of different operating systems on the
same PC (though there are simpler ways to do this) and to allow different people to use
the same PC while keeping their data and programs totally separate.
If you decide to use a mobile rack system, be sure to check out the specifications of
the unit you are considering carefully. Different models come with support for different
speed drives, some are made primarily of metal and others of plastic, and so on. Metal
units will provide better cooling than plastic ones. Some also come with an integrated
cooling fan, which is a good idea especially for higher-RPM drives.
Warning: If you decide to
set up this sort of arrangement with your PC, remember that regular internal hard drives
are designed under the assumption that they will be installed inside the PC and left
there. Be sure to handle them properly, and especially, to
observe ESD precautions.
Next: Hard Disk
Packaging and Mounting
