Disk rack

[pipme]

A thought .. I have a spare 5.25" bay in my desktop PC.
Am thinking using a 'rack' for system HDD, therefore able to keep one removable drive clean for any financial net business ie maybe a small HDD dedicated to non-general surfing ... another HDD for general family PC usage.
I take it that the HDD is connected to the carrier which itself 'plugs into the rack' .. is that so chaps ?
Any implications ?
Suggestions ?
I remember the old IBM pc's where the HDD was so easily removed, replaced .. we had them at work real good idea-- back then anyway.
Cheers. P

 

[nstreet]

HDD removable caddies are readily available from Maplin etc. Make sure your hdd's are all the same spec. What product are you thinking of?

 

[pipme]

It is just a little plan being hatched at present, not researched fully.

 

[breezer]

have you considered a zip drive, i have several pc's, one has an external zip drive, others internal

 

[pipme]

Have a zip drive hanging off the system now (only 100k tho bought for kids years ago)...
I am thinking total change of system .. change depending upon usage.
HDD's being so cheap now. Could be a good use for the older drive one has upgraded...

The old IBM's were great for that, just slide ddrive into place start up and use ... We used a drive for finance only ( no inter or intranet l).. Go to any dept. and use it in total security .. unless one forgot to remove the thing or even dropped it ..

Caddy eh ! Golf, tea, hdd useful piece of kit .. but no one has answered, so the 'caddy' carries the HDD which is wired to 'caddy' which is then slipped into the rack automatically making required connections ?? Like the old IBM .... yes ?

 

[breezer]

does indeed

 

[pipme]

Just thought .. if we all started searching first .. then we probably would not be hanging out here ... would we ?
Teetotal electronic version of the street corner or local ....

 

[breezer]

Teetotal

speak for yourself

 

[pipme]

Pint of Bass then, please guv'nor ... In a 'caddy of course' !!

 

[AdamW]

A thought .. I have a spare 5.25" bay in my desktop PC.
Am thinking using a 'rack' for system HDD, therefore able to keep one removable drive clean for any financial net business ie maybe a small HDD dedicated to non-general surfing ... another HDD for general family PC usage.
I take it that the HDD is connected to the carrier which itself 'plugs into the rack' .. is that so chaps ?
Any implications ?
Suggestions ?
I remember the old IBM pc's where the HDD was so easily removed, replaced .. we had them at work real good idea-- back then anyway.
Cheers. P

Well, I would guess that you want this swappable hard-drive to be your "boot" drive? This would make most sense, seeing as you want one "un-f**kable" HDD for your business, and one for general use. So, you don't need a "hot-swap" capability.

I thought of a few ways you could do this:

1) External USB/Firewire HDD - unfortunately Windows XP will not allow itself to be installed onto such a drive. I can think of a fudge that might work, but I couldn't guarantee it.
2) External SATA HDD. You may have come into contact with the SATA (Serial ATA) interface. This is replacing the old ribbon-wire interfaces of hard-drives. One of the new features is that you can have external hard-drives running on this interface. You could set two of these up as your separate boot drives dead easily, and plug in whichever you want to use.
3) Use an internal "cage", as you have used before with IBMs. There are loads here, for instance. Look for the "pullout bays".

Option 3 is easiest, it is also the one which you describe.

I take it that the HDD is connected to the carrier which itself 'plugs into the rack'

You also have it nailed in the way you describe it: you would of course need one caddy for each drive.

 

[pipme]

Yep ! Cheers m'dear ...
I am thinking two caddies .... holding the bootable drives.
Virtually two computers then..... As I said, one all nicely pristine and virginal ... locked down to banking only, no bells and peeps ... not talking expensive drive here just half decent - reliable - WDig I expect.

 

[AdamW]

Yep ! Cheers m'dear ...
I am thinking two caddies .... holding the bootable drives.
Virtually two computers then..... As I said, one all nicely pristine and virginal ... locked down to banking only, no bells and peeps ... not talking expensive drive here just half decent - reliable - WDig I expect.

You can get reliable, well-performing drives quite cheaply now.

I would recommend Seagate Barracuda: reliable (3 year warranty, some manufacturers now have a 1 year warranty) AND arguably the quietest drive on the market. 80gb can be had for about £35. To be honest, no point in getting anything smaller than 80GB now, 40GB drives (if you can get them) cost about the same, and you would have a hard time finding anything smaller than 40.

 

[Igorian]

Even 80GB drives are now considered small with 160GB being only about £7-10 more.

A word about warranties. If you buy a retail pack (ie drive in a box with manual, cables and junk), the warranty will probably be less than if you buy a bare drive. It's worth checking the manufacturer sites for warranty details. Some of the newer ATA drives now have a 5 year warranty.

 

[pipme]

Just recently bought a 40 GB 7.2Krpm WD Caviar, OEM, that is 'plain' no frills boxed (saved all the screws a bits from the old scrapped MJN 386 useful for fitting drives - )-- have had several (WD HD)down the years, including at work not had a failure yet - touch wood. This one is even quieter than the old 20 GB..
Reason I bought a the smaller 40Gb was with the other HDD, zip, cd rw, dvd, cam card reader .. just too many partitions for my liking.
I have had great service from NortonSystemWorks 2002, with regard to 'DiskDoctor' and the defragger etc ... 20GB is processed reasonably quickly, too much more and it'll be very lengthy process .. given that I seem to have hovered around 4.5GB free on the 20GB HDD from new (5 yo nearly).. I felt, for current usage 40 GB was a large enough step up.
Looking ahead, they say support for Win98se will end next year, so I'll probably buy a new m/c - was hoping to jump to Long(short)horn - but that may be too far off.... I may even knock one up (pc !!) myself .. but I'll certainly have a nice little spare HDD for caddying.....

 

[AdamW]

20GB is processed reasonably quickly, too much more and it'll be very lengthy process

Yes, you could be right... defragging my 900GB is a somewhat odious task

There are people out there with multi-terabyte servers in their homes, I wonder if they ever defrag?