Advice on exchangeable drive rack?

I just joined the forum and have been reading the posts.

It was suggested to use an exchangeable drive rack inside the PC. To change drives in my pc I need to remove screws and pull the cage out. I tried googling for exchangeable drive racks and pulled up lots of jargon but nothing that sounded like what I was looking for.

Above my hard drive cage (holds two), I have another "cage" inside my pc with four slots that open to the outside. One is filled with my dvd writer, three are free. There are no rails.

Would these be usable for removable hard drives? Or could I insert a cage here that would be useable? Where would I find one?

Thanks for any advice,
Marliz

 

These are similar to the ones I use. Just make sure you get SATA or IDE racks to suit your HDD. They've served me very well for 4yrs+. Inexpensive but not cheap quality. Once you are sorted with these or others. Switching HDD will be the easiest.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... racks&Submit=ENE&N=0&Ntk=all&Go.x=16&Go.y=37
KINGWIN KF-21-IPF Beige Mobile 5.25" HDD Rack - Retail
I have 2 racks & 2 drawers. Some get a 3rd drawer.

 

Thanks for the reply and the link! I have installed drives before but am far from expert.

The writer in my cage is held by screws. I changed it myself from a plain dvd drive and think I must have taken the cage out to install. Since I was replacing a drive, everything I needed was there.

Even though there are four slots to the outside of the computer, only the one used and the one above have holes for screws. Do you know if this KINGWIN drive cage includes all that I need to install? Once I order one and install it I will know if the top two bays need those holes. Can't figure out why they aren't there.

Thank you for the help,
Marliz

 

Welcome to Wilders Marliz.

What is the main reason why you want to put a hard drive into a mobile rack?

 

To test my backups. Idea gained from reading the forum. It's always made me nervous wondering if the backup will work when I need it. Being able to swap drives easily sounds awesome!

 

There is no easier way to swap out hard drives than with a mobile rack.
Proving that your backup works is one of the most important things you can do, otherwise you never really know for sure. And when you really need to count on your backups is not the time to find out whether they work.

A mobile rack can also help with security and privacy.
Going away on a long vacation, take out the hard drive and put it in a safe place.

It can also be used if you want to try other operating systems, one tray (cartridge, drawer) for windows and another for a different OS.

Is the hard drive to be installed PATA (Parallel ATA) or SATA (Serial ATA)?

 

It's also good if you share the computer with others. Especially when they're click happy, turn off AV & PF cause an app told them. Etc.

So they're OS is crippled. Who cares? You told them. They didn't listen.

Just pop their tray out. And put in your HDD. And when you're done. Take yours & leave theirs.

Sorry. Don't get your meaning.

 

You have three available external 5 1/4" drive bays that you could put the mobile rack into. These bays have a removable cover on the front that usually is snapped out (you may have to remove the front panel fascia of the computer).
A mobile rack has two parts, the frame and the tray.
Usually mobile racks come with the required mounting screws necessary to mount the frame to the cage and screws to mount the hard drive to the tray.
If the existing hard drive cable reaches, that is all you need.

Be sure to insert or remove the tray only when the computer is off.

 

Good idea

 

Marliz,

If all you want is to prove that the backups work, you don't really need a mobile rack.
You will likely test that your backup strategy actually works (by doing a restore) only a few times to see if there are any hardware/software issues.
So you could just hook up the other hard drive in the cage and restore to it during the tests.

 

Sorry, I'm late getting back. Have been off line. Thank you so much for all the replies! Will try to address some of the things mentioned:

I have two internal SATA drives with an onboard source that will only take two. Gave up on Raid because of problems and use them as storage drives.

Also two internal PATA drives. One is used as my primary drive, the other as storage. One is master, one slave.

The other IDE cable is hooked to my DVD writer. I think there I could hook the removable drive to that as slave, but don't know that for sure. I might need to get a longer cable to reach. I'm guessing I would have to make the new drive the master and the writer the slave, for the new drive to become primary when I test the backup? Am not sure if a writer works well as a slave.

I use a lot of data storage since I work with large photos and other data files. A lot of the extra space is used for backing up data and photos. Also use two external drives.

When I look at the larger "cage" holding my DVD writer and three empty bays, it seems like I should be able to put in another hard drive, but there are no rails, no way I can see to anchor the drive in there. That would be my test drive for backups. If the mobile rack came with a frame and screws I could probably figure out how to install it into an empty bay.

My PC is a Velocity Micro. Well built, but it didn't come with a diagram of the interior and the farmed out tech support doesn't even know what the inside looks like so I gave up on getting help from the company.

I can see why it was hard to picture what I was trying to describe. Was wishing I could take a photo and add an attachment.

My system is quite complicated. It might be better to use fewer and much larger drives; mine run from 160 to 200 gb; but I feel safer distributing the files over more drives.

Hope this makes some sense! I'll wait a couple of days to see if you have any other suggestions, and then order the mobile rack to try.

Marliz