12 Jan
2006
12 Jan
'06
11:20 p.m.
Hello all,
Regarding the recent talk about using hard drive carriers (in order to
reduce the number of machines in your environment, etc.), has me wanting to
invest in a few.
Is there a specific brand anyone uses?
I have one drive carrier I purchased years ago (at a local mom & pop
computer store for something like $15) -- a cheap, no-name brand (can't
even find a brand name on it). The drive connector in the tray is flimsy,
it is a pain in the a** to get the drive in and out of the tray, and it
just generally doesn't give me a real cozy feeling of sturdiness when using it.
So I ask, are there specific brands of these carriers people use? Where do
y'all purchase them?
The ones I use are fairly generic from a company called "SNT".
They go in a 5.25" bay, and hold a 3.5" drive. They use a 50-pin
Telco connector (Looks like a Centronics parallel connecter but longer)
to connect the carrier (data and power) to the bay. I've had a little
trouble with the connectors but they work OK if you keep them clean).
The carriers themselves are sturdy enough I've probably got about 30
of them, some of which are more than 10 years old and have not had a
single one fail (I tried another brand once and the handle broke off in the
first week - this one had a removable "panel" in the face which made the
structure of the front quite weak).
I generally use the ones without a fan (less to fail) - they come with
metal covers for the top and bottom which essentially block cooling to
the drive - I take these off and toss them so the drive is exposed to
cabinet air like a non-carrier installation. I find the drives run noticably
cooler if you do this.
The drives screw into the carriers, however I have modified three of
my carriers by mounting retaining "beams" across the bottom, so that
the drive can just sit into the carrier without having to screw it in. (Also
reenforced the data & power cables so they won't break after repeated
insertion/removal - this lets me have a whole slew of less frequently
used drives which I can easily "drop in" to a machine without having
to take it apart.
The ones I have use a key to insert/remove the drive which is a bit of
a pain. You can bypass the power switch and avoid having to use the
key, however this forfeits "hot plugging" (which I never do anyway),
but the key also slides in a physical retainer which keeps the drive
from accidently being removed - so I continue to use
the keys (I just
have them all over my office and lab). According to the boxes they
come in, there is also a version which uses a button to release the
drive instead of a key, however I have not found any of these...
Regards,
Dave
--
dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html