Views on removable drive bays?

[sbanks]

I'm wondering about whether to get something like this when building my new PC:

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=21812

It basically allows you to easily insert/remove a hard drive from your PC.

I've only recently moved house, and in the last house I had a laptop safe where I'd put my laptop everytime I left, as I want it secure. However, while I plan to get a safe for the new house I'm also planning on building a new PC, which won't be a laptop.

So with the new PC I'll not be able to just put it in the safe when I leave the house. But if I could just remove the hard drive, I could easily put that in a safe. It'd be annoying if the PC was stolen, but at least I'd still have all my data and nobody else would have it.

So - I was just wondering if anyone had used these and had any comments? My main questions are:

1) Is it suitable for using with the main hard drive?

2) Would it run at the same speed as a normal internal hard drive?

3) If I was inserting/removing the hard disk a couple of times a day over a couple of years, and transporting it too/from a safe, would the hard drive be ok? I'd not intend on dropping it on the floor, but it would still be moved around a lot more than if it was just left in the PC

4) Would I be better off getting a motherboard with e-sata and have an external e-sata hard drive?

[Firerat]

I have used IDE ones in the past


[quote:96032aeaa9=\"sbanks\"]1) Is it suitable for using with the main hard drive?[/quote:96032aeaa9]
Yeap

[quote:96032aeaa9=\"sbanks\"]2) Would it run at the same speed as a normal internal hard drive?[/quote:96032aeaa9]
From the description this is SATA 1, so it will be half the speed of a Newr SATA2 Drive.
Although I don't actually understand why this device would limit it to SATA1 speeds, These things are normaly just a basic connection, so it would be you SATA Controller/Drive that would be the limit.

[quote:96032aeaa9=\"sbanks\"]3) If I was inserting/removing the hard disk a couple of times a day over a couple of years, and transporting it too/from a safe, would the hard drive be ok? I'd not intend on dropping it on the floor, but it would still be moved around a lot more than if it was just left in the PC[/quote:96032aeaa9]

you can expect some ware and tare on the Caddy over time, but I would imagine it would last many years

The drive itself should be fine, just don't go pulling it out without giving it time to power down.

[quote:96032aeaa9=\"sbanks\"]4) Would I be better off getting a motherboard with e-sata and have an external e-sata hard drive?[/quote:96032aeaa9]

The Caddy will require a compatable Bay on each PC you wanted to use it on, so yes, an External SATA Drive will be more portable, as I'm certain E-SATA will come as standard on most mainboards soon.

[sbanks]

Thanks FireRat!

I did notice that it was only SATA 1... There are some SATA 2 options on Aria, but those seem to be multiple removable bays like:

http://www.vodafone.co.uk/livestudio

I'd not be too worried about the caddy breaking after extensive use, as that's cheap enough to replace if I was unlucky. It's more the effect on the hard disk being constantly moved around.

I'd have thought that nowadays it'd be fine, once it'd powered down like you say. But I thought it worth asking as it'd be ironic to get one of these so I could protect my hard disk from potential theft only to end up with an even greater chance of it corrupting because I kept moving it!

I'd only ever intend on using it on my main PC, so wouldn't need to worry about whether other PCs had a caddy or not, but it might be simpler to make sure I get a motherboard with E-SATA and get an external E-SATA drive.

[SIMON11]

Hard drive caddies are great! Easy to swap drives, use different operating systems etc. Back up is easy. I like two drives in caddies. It makes life much easier. If the wear out a bit in time they are easy to re-place.

[sbanks]

In the end I got this drive bay:

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=21631

It holds 3 hard drives. I currently only want 2, but a spare for the future doesn't hurt.

I found it difficult fitting it into the case I had (Akasa Zen) and needed to bend a bit of the case's drive bay inside as it wasn't quite big enough. I was hoping that it'd slot in more easily, but maybe it would in other cases..

Still, it's installed and looks good and works well! So I'm happy with it!

The one thing that does concern me a bit, though, is that the caddy that you place the drive doesn't enclose the drive. So you have to be careful when handling it as I don't want to be touching the circuit board on the underside of the drive.

Also, when you insert/remove the caddy it is the sata connector on the back of the drive that gets inserted in or removed from the connector. So I don't know how advisable it is to be inserting/removing the drive too frequently as I'd not want to damage that.

Other than that I'm very pleased with it!