Holt said:
Thank you very much for your reply, Anna. Your comments clarified many
points. Thanks a lot.
I am not familiar with those (removable drives in mobile racks)
What is a removable tray? What is a mobile rack?
Holt
Holt:
It's a most wonderful hardware configuration for a desktop (not a
laptop/notebook) computer. It's a pity more computer users don't use this
hardware arrangement.
Some time ago, in response to a request I received from a computer club, I
prepared an article for their monthly bulletin outlining the advantages of
equipping one's desktop computer with removable hard drives and provided
some details about their installation & use. Slightly edited, here it is. I
trust you (and others possibly interested in this hardware configuration)
will find it of some value. Note that I referred to the
connection/configuration of PATA drives since that was the primary interest
of my audience. Using SATA drives would even simplify the configuration.
Assuming your desktop computer has two available 5 1/4" bays, i.e., vacant
bays that you can utilize, you can equip your computer with two removable
hard drives in their mobile racks. By equipping your computer in this
fashion you will, for all practical purposes, be able to simply and easily
maintain a near fail-safe backup system and at the same time be able to
experiment with different programs and configurations with the full
realization that should anything go awry you will be able to return to your
original system and configuration in a near-instant. And accomplish all this
from the comfort of
your computer chair with no need to get inside your computer case to make
frequently complicated cable/power disconnects and connects. It's close to
an ideal system for many, if not most, desktop computer users and I can
virtually guarantee that
once you begin working with this arrangement you'll never want to return to
the "old" way. It's that good.
The hard drives are housed in so-called "mobile racks" that fit in the 5
1/4" bays of a desktop's computer case. The racks are easily installed in a
computer's case; the installation process is virtually no different than
installing any other 5 1/4" device such as a CD/DVD device. The racks
themselves are two-piece affairs with the HD residing in a removable tray
that slides in and out of the rack. The beauty of this arrangement is that
the drives can be easily accessed from outside the computer case. An
enormous advantage. Note that these mobile racks are designed for desktop
computers and are not feasible for laptops/notebooks because of their
size/weight considerations.
So by using a disk imaging program such as Symantec's Norton Ghost or
Acronis True Image or other disk imaging program, you can routinely clone
the contents of your day-to-day working hard drive to the second drive, thus
having a virtual bit-for-bit copy of that working drive with the added
advantage that the cloned drive will be bootable. And through the use of
additional removable trays you're free to create additional clones on hard
drives that you can easily remove from the premises for near-absolute
security. Then again, you can use separate (limitless!) hard drives for
whatever purposes you desire -- different operating systems, photos, one
each for your children and for the visiting grandchild, etc. And you're free
to make clones of *those* drives if you so desire. And when the day comes
that one or another of your hard drives goes to Hard Drive Heaven (Hell?),
it's a simple matter to replace that drive from the comfort of your computer
chair without having to get inside your computer case.
In my opinion the best arrangement is to have *two* removable hard drives
installed. Assuming you're using PATA drives, one mobile rack containing
your day-to-day working drive would be connected as Primary Master and the
second rack (usually) connected as Secondary Master. With this configuration
you could boot to whichever drive you desired simply by turning the other
rack's keylock to the Off position.
However, if you have only a single 5 1/4" bay available to house one mobile
rack, you can still profitably use a single removable hard drive. In this
instance you would have your day-to-day working hard drive installed as a
fixed internal drive and the second drive would be your removable drive. The
fixed internal drive (i.e., your C: drive) would be configured as Secondary
Master while the removable drive would be your Primary Master. During normal
operations the removable drive would be electrically disconnected from the
machine by a simple turn of the mobile rack's keylock to the Off position.
(For additional safety, you could even physically disconnect the removable
drive from the computer by a simple pull of the rack's handle. No more
difficult then opening a small desk drawer). So, with this configuration,
the system would boot to your internal hard drive. When a time comes that
you want to boot from the removable drive you would simply connect it by
turning the keylock to the On position. Since it's configured as Primary
Master, the computer will boot to that drive. Using this configuration, the
user wouldn’t even have to remove the removable tray housing the HD.
Do you see the enormous advantages of this hardware configuration? Now you
can safely "play around" with a wide variety of programs and configurations
on your day-to-day working hard drive, confident that if anything goes awry
(even to the extent that your working drive becomes physically or
electronically defective), you have a perfectly good bootable clone that is
virtually instantly at hand. And you can easily clone back to your internal
drive (assuming it's not mechanically/electronically defective) the contents
of the previously cloned removable drive.
There's a wide variety of mobile racks available on the market ranging in
cost from about $15 (all plastic) to $50 and up for the all-aluminum models.
Interestingly enough, in my experience the cheapest models seem to work just
as well as the more expensive ones. Installing them is no more difficult
then installing a CD-ROM or other 5 1/4" device. You can do a Google search
of "mobile racks" to peruse the many different available models.
I can assure you that once you begin working with removable hard drives
(preferably two), you'll have one and only one regret -- that you didn't
have this hardware configuration on your previous desktop computer(s). It's
that good.
Anna
