Vantec EZ-Swap Removable Drive Bays

Reviews: Storage

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Richard Poelling
Kurtis
JacolTech
Aug. 24, 2003

Introduction

Just what is a HDD rack and why should it be mobile? These days everything seems to be mobile, so that answers that question, but why would someone want to install one of these in their system? I'll tell you why, because they look cool and make swapping out hard drives a breeze. By placing a mobile rack in two different computers, you are able to transfer files back and forth. You are only limited to the size of the hard drive you can install in the rack itself. Considering the prices of hard drives are sitting at about $100 for 120 Gb, that pretty much kicks a zip disk, jazz disk, or even a CD-ROM or DVD drive to the curb!

Most people have no idea what a mobile rack is. These are also often referred to as removable drive bays, and all sorts of other less interesting names. What Vantec has decided to call these is the "EZ-Swap Removable Hard Drive Rack." Quite a mouthful for what appears to be such a simple product. The idea behind a removable drive bay is a simple one, to be able to remove and swap hard disk drives at will without having to gain entry into the case. This functionality is not new to those who are familiar with SCSI drives in servers. The idea is not new, but this execution is.

Initial Inspection & Packaging

The box of the Vantec HDD rack is nicely adorned with all sorts of specs and functionality. I would like to see a bit more detail on the back rather than a rehashing of what is written on the front, although all the information presented was done concisely. I received 2 rack systems, one black and the other gray. They came wrapped in a bubble-wrapped bag, which, unless you seriously abuse these things, is more than adequate. It is essentially a big aluminum box anyways. Also included in the package was the Quick Installation Guide, two identical keys, and a little bag of screws for mounting.

Upon initial inspection, you will be greeted with a very heavy product. The racks are made mostly of aluminum. Although one of the lighter metals, it still weighs more than some of the other, flimsier, plastic racks I have owned and used. Considering that most peopleï¿½s hard drives are their most precious commodity, the heaviness and well-built quality should be very reassuring.

On the back of the rack you will notice the small exhaust fan and all the standard connectors such as the IDE and power connections. The master/slave settings are located on the backside of the cartridge.

Rack Installation

Installation of the drive bay into the computer is very straightforward. Anyone who can install a standard CD-ROM drive can put one of these in. A word of caution on rack placement: Like many people, I install my CD drives in the uppermost bay location. I was therefore going to install both drive bays below the CD-ROM. The first went in without any problems. The second drive impacted the motherboard and therefore would not slide in all the way. I had to then remove everything, put the two racks on top and the CD on the bottom. Eventually everything fit. This may not be a problem with some taller cases, but most mid-tower cases with ATX motherboards will have this problem. Other than that issue, installation of the rack was easy.

Unfortunately that is where the easy part stops. Remember that "Quick Installation Guide" that came with these things? Hope you didnï¿½t lose that. One glance at this "Quick" guide will let you know you are in for some work. Yes, that is front and back, not just two different languages either.

First off, you must remove the bay from the rack. To do this, you just pull the lever out and the thing will spring forward. This is assuming you havenï¿½t just fiddled with the key and inadvertently locked the thing. This will make removal MUCH harder. The silver rack came out easily; but the black one seemed to require more force. At one point I was even worrying that I might snap the lever off. Just pull out the lever to free the unit. A nice spring-loaded door with the Vantec logo will snap shut behind it to keep out all those dust bunnies.

Drive Installation

Now with the cartridge out, you can begin inserting your hard drive. (Hope those instructions are handy). To gain entry into the rack, you will need to depress a small piece of plastic at the front of the drive. This will release the aluminum lid and it should slide off towards the back. This is where I had a product failure. After sliding the aluminum lid on and off a couple of times, the plastic retaining clip snapped off and fell into the bay. I was surprised that it broke off after so few uses (approx. 3-4 removals). I tested the black one but was unable to replicate the results. I therefore chalked it up to fatigued plastic, and continued on. Something to note is that although damaged, the bay still functions.

One of the features of these bays is the pass through jumper settings. What this basically entails is a set of 3 wires, which are hooked up to a set of 4 dip switches on the back of the bay. This will allow you to change from master and slave without having to open the bay and physically remove the jumpers. Unless you own an IBM or Seagate drive, the jumper wire settings are not listed on the installation instructions. This could pose a problem if you just gutted the only computer that has Internet access in the house. Luckily for me, I have a spare. A quick jump over to Vantecï¿½s website yielded the correct jumper combination that I required for my Maxtor 120 hard drive. After installing the jumpers and setting the dip switches to the appropriate setting, plug in the IDE cable and the molex connecter and your drive is all hooked up. Finally, you must stuff all this back into the bay. This will take a bit of "persuasion" as the IDE connector is about 2 inches long and is not located directly behind the drive connections. Anyone who has tried to bend those flat IDE cables knows how much fun they are to maneuver. Once in, you can now slide the aluminum housing back on and you are ready to go.

Inserting the cartridge back into the rack is as simple as reversing the removal process. Once the cartridge is engaged into the rack, you will need to lock it in place using the keys that came with it. There are actually two locking options. One option will lock the drive without the display on; the other locks the drive with the display on. This is a nice feature, especially if the green glow of the display might bother you. Although if you werenï¿½t going to use the display, why spend the money on one?

Letï¿½s fire these things up... After turning on the power, all the previous hassle will just melt away. These things look cool. They will give any system a unique look, even one of those standard beige boxes that are so hated today. Upon boot up, a temperature reading will display, along with the Master/Slave designation, a little spinning fan icon, and a disk usage symbol. The temp reading is very easy to read even at several feet away. Under the display there are 3 blue buttons. These are a "set" button, a "down" button, and of course an "up" button. Pressing either the "up" or "down" buttons will take you to the HUTR or HDD Usage Time Record display. This readout is supposedly how long your drive has been accessing. Itï¿½s basically a nice piece of eye candy. Pressing the set button once will allow you to set the Temp Display units, either Fahrenheit or Celsius. Pressing the "set" button a second time takes you to the Temp alarm functionality. This is a nice usable feature, as it will trigger a very audible alarm in the event your hard drive overheats. To set the temp, you just use the "up" and "down" arrows to adjust to the desired setting. You then have to press and hold for 2 seconds the "set" key. The device will beep twice to confirm your choice. Just pressing the set key exits the screen without saving your changes, which can get a bit annoying, but you will get used to it.

Testing

In case you were wondering, yes the alarm does work. I set it to a low temp and triggered it. You could hear it easily in the next room. Pressing any button silences it. I did have to power down the system and unlock the drive to change the setting back to a higher number because after the alarm was triggered it apparently locked out all the button functionality. I do not know if this was by design or just a software glitch. With that said, itï¿½s not that big a deal because your drive is overheating! You should turn the computer off anyways.

I also switched the drive cartridges with one another. They swapped into the other rack flawlessly. This confirmed that you could install these racks in different machines and be assured that they would easily swap between one another.

Conclusion

Overall this is a good quality product. Although I had a few problems, they werenï¿½t anything too major. The broken tab is very disappointing, especially for a drive bay that I would consider to be higher end, even though it did not seriously affect functionality. These things would work great in any computer provided you have the room and the budget. You canï¿½t get just one, these things work best in pairs.

Pros

Easily readable temp display
Lockable
Heavy aluminum construction
Flip-down bay door when cartridge is removed
Looks great

Cons

Possible design / materials flaw in retaining clip
Jumper settings for only 2 drive manufacturers listed on instructions
Inconsistent pressure required for drive release
Very long design could interfere with some motherboard / case combinations
Could be a bit too pricey for the average consumer.

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8 User Comments

1 - Posted by Kurtis on August 24, 2003 - 4:23 pm

:D YAY :) Congrats on the first review bro. Good job.

2 - Posted by handrail on August 26, 2003 - 9:06 am

these things look totally badass...especially in rich's home machine....not in that beige boring case in the review.

buy them now.....now!

3 - Posted by DnD on August 26, 2003 - 10:52 am

must....not....buy....now :D i don't have a computer i wanna switch it up with O_o so i dun need it....but it does look very cool! And if i did i'd probably buy it.

4 - Posted by Rich on August 26, 2003 - 10:55 am

I will have to post a pic of the fully rigged machine.

5 - Posted by deftno9 on August 26, 2003 - 2:45 pm

NICE, got the whole techlounge white backdrop motif thing goin. If I had ne use for this thing I'd prob pick one up. Nice review

6 - Posted by Stan The Man on October 24, 2004 - 6:25 pm

I have to echo the comments about the quality of the plastic moulding, in my case particularly the 'Active' release lever, which caused concern that the lever would snap before the door could be opened.

Having the advantage of two Cartridge Units it was evident that one [difficult to open] had a very sharp protrusion from the latching nib. This happens when the casting mould components do not mate/close properly and excess plastic material is forced out into the resulting gap.

Removal of this surplus material, by means of a couple of light strokes with some very fine wet and dry [used dry on this occasion] removed the offending material and considerably eased the door opening operation.

There are minor differences between the two Cartridges, one being the method of securing the HDD [one uses bottom holes and the other side holes] and the other is the IDE connector to the HDD. On one unit the flat ribbon is a very short version of the standard IDE connector and as reported this is slightly offset and tricky to assemble and ‘fold/nest’ as the HDD is eased into the housing. The second [and indeed subsequent third] unit this IDE ribbon has splits running along its length so that there are effectively several narrow ribbons to contend with. This modification makes it very much easier to manipulate the HDD into its final position.

The jumper leads is a brilliant idea [all the jumpers are removed beforehand], being the optimum length to permit connection whilst not being too long to tuck in safely behind the HDD, and enabling the HDD to be configured by operating the DIP Switches instead of moving the Jumpers. So once in the safety of the aluminium case the HDD can remain there. Although the instructions only cover a couple of Brands the three HDD’s in use [Seagate – Samsung – Hitachi] all use the standard configuration to set them up as Masters. If you have drives with special requirements is not Rocket Science to work out what is required, a lead plugged in and it’s DIP Switch set to ‘On’ is the equivalent of a Jumper in that position. So you simply plug in the leads where required and switch them appropriately [to save spare leads being loose these are plugged in and switched to ‘Off’].

The instructions for setting up the Temperature Monitoring and the use of the Display could be improved, but given the amount of information and only three buttons to play with everything is soon under control.

In use the Key Switch does not give any feedback and is fiddly to operate, the key will fall out in any position if let go, as the insertion distance is insufficient. It would have been preferred that the design concentrated on these items rather than the ‘security’ aspects. There is absolutely no way that the Handle when locked in the ‘On’ or ‘Off’ position [both allow key removal] would prevent all but a young child removing the drive if they were determined to do so. This would require an all metal handle and latch arrangement and increase the cost dramatically [and of course this would not prevent the whole machine being given ‘legs’ by a thief].

The review remarked that these work best in pairs but apart from mentioning that Cartridges swapped flawlessly between Racks did not expand on this. For my use being able to swap discs using spare Cartridges is a must for remote safe storage of cloned OS and Data.

Regarding price, do a good search there are widely differing prices as at 24-10-2004, also note that many suppliers do not offer spare Cartridges or if they do have silly prices.

Considering the price these are well made, I will be buying more.

7 - Posted by SPotter on March 8, 2006 - 7:23 am

A comment explaining how to 'tag' the drive as 'removable' for windows (XP/2K/etc) would be useful ;)

8 - Posted by Rich on March 8, 2006 - 8:56 am

Are you referring to hot swapping the drives?

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