Hot Swap trays for IDE Devices

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Guest

Guest
What brandnames do you folks suggest for Hot Swap trays capable of handling IDE devices (specifically 40gig hard drives)

is there anything i should specifically look for?
will they (the trays) work with extra IDE controllers, thus allowing more than 4 ide devices?

thanks for the input,
deef
 

Lars_Coleman

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I don't know of anyone better then Promise that makes one. I would check this one out. It's called the <A HREF="http://www.promise.com/PDF/sswapds.pdf" target="_new"><font color=green>SuperSwap</font color=green></A>.

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HonestJhon

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there are these hot swap firewire cases for ide drives i think
cant remember which online store i saw it at...if i find the link i will post here...
but i dont know how you can power an ide drive with firewire...does firewire put out enough juice??

-DAvid

-Live, Learn, then build your own computer!-
 

Lars_Coleman

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I know they're expensive, but I don't know of any others out there. The one from CompGeeks isn't hot swap though.

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Lars_Coleman

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I guess I should read a little better. I didn't see the hotswap spec.

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G

Guest

Guest
Hmmm, im just wondering why the genica hotswap drives are so much cheaper ($7.49 comparied to over $80) than the promise ones.

it's confusing :) but if there's no major drawback, ill get the genica ones.
 

Lars_Coleman

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Yeah, if it says it's hot swap, go for it!

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FatBurger

Illustrious
I'd be careful, they might be advertising hotswap, but you probably need a hotswap-compatible ATA controller to use it. I'm not sure, but that's what I'm guessing. Otherwise, I'll buy some myself.

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G

Guest

Guest
Excellent point fat burger, thanks for pointing this out..

It doesnt say anything in the "products requirements" section about a Hotswap-Compatible ATA controller and mentions "just set your BIOS to Auto Detect to migrate hard drives easily and quickly"

I think i'll look into it further though.
 

FatBurger

Illustrious
I emailed them and got a reply, let me find it real quick...
Here, my original message is below, BTW.

No - nothing special is needed - hot swappable is built in to the units - swap as you need
We just offer great deals :)

Thank you
The Geeks



Website Email Message wrote:

> I have a question about your Genica mobile drive rack. It says it's hot-swappable, but do you need a hot-swappable hard drive controller (like the ones from Promise), in order to do that? I'm curious how you can sell hot-swap units for $7.50.
>
> Thanks
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HonestJhon

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these things look pretty sweet!
and only 7.49!
i could take my old 10 gig hard drive, and tote it with me when i need to transfer large files!


-DAvid

-Live, Learn, then build your own computer!-
 

HonestJhon

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this is what i was thinking about...but it is external... <A HREF="http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=103501" target="_new">http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=103501</A>
heh...i think that this is cool too...but i would rather have the thing hooked up to an ide cable, since that is probably going to be faster.


-DAvid

-Live, Learn, then build your own computer!-
 
G

Guest

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I think i've found a good deal here! :) they seem to be high quality (inc fan, etc) so it's definitly worth the 8 bucks, or however much.

thanks a bunch guys, you've been a huge help.

i'm ready to make my purchase :)
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
You can hot-swap standard IDE drives in ANY removable drive cage! Simply set the drive as removable in system properties and have at it! You do NOT need to restart if your using an identicle drive, but you do need to restart in order to redetect a different drive type.
I used a cheap drive cage for months like that! For $9 you can't go wrong!

What's the frequency, Kenneth?
 
G

Guest

Guest
lol, so.... for example, if i have a 40gig maxtor HD hooked into one of the genica hotswap "cages" and i pull it out and replace it with an IBM 40gig HD i'll need to restart before it recognizes the new IBM drive?

hmm, confusing.
 

tigershark

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I'm just setting this up now. I bought 2 Genica GN210 bays and 2 extra trays, a 40 Gb Seagate HD, and PowerQuest's Drive Image 2002. Unfortunately, I encountered a problem. The Genica manual specifically says that the bay MUST be installed on the secondary IDE channel. I tried it as primary/slave, but when the HD is in the bay and enabled, the system no longer detects the primary master on boot up! (yes, i triple checked that both HD's have cable select jumpered correctly :)

Does anyone know why it must be on the secondary channel? My original plan was to make my primary/master removable with the second bay I bought so that if C drive dies, all I need to do is power down and replace it with the backup drive (for this application I don't need to be able to hot swap).

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Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
That's odd. I was using non-hotswap trays as hotswap under 98SE because 98SE supports it (XP doesn't!). That is to say, 98SE will hot swap without the extra hardware XP requires. I was running them on Secondary of course, because I couldn't very well pull a drive on a channel that was being accessed. I also used them non-hot swapping on the Primary channel.

That might be what they're refering to, you probably can't pull a drive on the channel the OS sits on if your computer is running the OS...else file transfers on the other drive may be interupted catastrophically.

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