I have been thinking about using a mobile rack and tray system to swap
out hard drives which store data, such as my music and video DVD
collections. One such system is this: http://kingwin.com/mobileracktrays.asp

Does anyone have any experience with these systems for home use? Do
the drives cook? Do the rack components (plastic) hold up over time?
Who makes a good one?

Thanks
Ken K

Previously ken k <kdkrone@gmail.com> wrote:
I had a parir in a server that despitea 80mm fan and air-conditioned
server room did not cool the disks well at all. I think there was
not enough of an air-path in there. So be skeptic, even if there
is a seemingly large enough fan.

Depends on the quality of manufacturing.

Currently I don't have a source. Maybe someone else here knows.

Arno

"ken k" wrote:
Actually, those are just the trays for the mobile racks. The entire
assemblies are here: http://kingwin.com/mobileracks.asp .
I've had a KF-101-IPF (with the 60mm cooling fan in the bottom of
the tray) for about 4 years, now. It has held up fine, but I admit that
I only use it for backups. They are all-aluminum except for the locking
handle, and the bottom fan really keeps the hard drive cool and the fan
is quiet. Unfortunately, the concept of a bottom fan has not sold well,
and the bottom fan version has been discontinued in the IDE line and
not carried over to the SATA line. What remains in the mobile rack
line-up are the ones with 1 to 3 fans that blow straight through - a
pleasingly intuitive concept, but a noisy one as the fans are only 40mm
in diameter so they spin fast. I've heard that the plastic mobile racks
made by Athena have bottom fans, and those are an alternative.


A poster in a microsoft NG swears by Athena, and she says that
being plastic doesn't reduce the cooling or longevity.

I like Kingwin for their large selection and reasonable prices.

*TimDaniels*

Previously Timothy Daniels <SpamBucket@nospamplease.biz> wrote:
From personal experience I agree that bottom fans are the better
solution.

This would mean that the cooling is mainly by airflow.
Not surprising.

Arno

"Arno Wagner" wrote:
Yes, there is little firm contact area between the hot parts
of a hard drive and the tray that it is mounted in, so any conduction
to the aluminum tray is minimal.

But I meant longevity of the plastic pieces. The other poster
is an IT consultant who recommends Athena to her clients, and
there have been no reported problems resulting from their plastic
construction.

*TimDaniels*

Arno Wagner wrote in news:67puroF2q9etfU1@mid.individual.net
Especially on the multiple fan concept, if one fan dies the drive is still
reasonably protected against overheating.

Well, at least it's a cheap and cheerful indicator that they are still working.

Which is quite enough.
I have one 40mm fan blowing on top of a 10K SCSI and it's running
on 7 Volts which is available in any tray suited for 3.5" drives

There is no 'so' about it.
I have one 40mm fan blowing on top of a 10K SCSI and it's running
on 7 Volts which is available in any tray suited for 3.5" drives.
That's on top, where as the temperature sensor is on the bottom of
the drive. It runs at a nice 33C at 20C ambient.

If memory serves me right it runs somewhere in the high 40ies without it.

Silly you.

Pity then when that *single* bottom fan fails and the
rack has no protection against it, the drive cooks itself.

Personally I would look for a tray with a front air intake and back-half
bottom-and-top air outlets, so the case fan(s) can serve as alternate tray
fans.

On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:31:25 -0700, "Timothy Daniels"
<SpamBucket@NoSpamPlease.biz> wrote:

Do you have a URL for this "Athena?"

Would not even know what to search for.

Thanks

<Tony of Dyker Beach> wrote:

Athena Power seems to have changed its website since last
night. Now the only mobile racks with a bottom fan is this for
SATA: http://athenapower.com/sub/mr136b.htm
and this one with temperature monitoring for IDE:
http://athenapower.com/sub/mr999atn.htm

All models are aided by the case and power supply exhaust
fans, and in case of a failure of the mobile rack fan, air is still
drawn through the tray. Such are the advantages of case fans
which blow air out the back, keeping the case interior at an air
pressure lower than ambient.

*TimDaniels*

"Timothy Daniels" <SpamBucket@NoSpamPlease.biz> wrote in message
news:4818f645$0$7034$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...

Tony:
Take a look here...
http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16817123302
the model we use.
and here...
http://www.athenapower.com
and click on "Mobile Rack"

You might also want to access the alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt newsgroup
and access the recent thread on "Re: Mobile racks and trays".
Anna

Previously Anna <myname@myisp.net> wrote:



I have to say that I had 2 of these for 4 drives each. The cooling
was completely insufficient and the backplane was manufactured
shoddily enough that I got SATA bus errors because of imprecise
trace lenghts. This was admittedly 3 years ago. I take it these
two issues are fixed in the 1 drive variant?

Arno

"Arno Wagner" <me@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:67sntqF2q8sn9U1@mid.individual.net...

Arno:
I assume you've seen my posts in the pc-homebuilt newsgroup referred to
above re the Athena removable HDD mobile rack.

As far as mobile racks designed to handle two or more HDDs...

I've really had only limited experience with them - chiefly the Athena
BP-SATA3051B model (holds 5 HDDs with the unit installed in 3 bays). See...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817995001

During the relatively short time we worked with that unit we didn't
experience any problems - heat-related or otherwise. I'm aware of one other
user who's been using that unit for some time now and he's satisfied with
it.
Anna

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:44:44 -0700, "Timothy Daniels"
<SpamBucket@NoSpamPlease.biz> wrote:

Thanks very much for the two links Timothy.

Much appreciated.

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:15:36 -0400, "Anna" <myname@myisp.net> wrote:


Thanks Anna that really helps. :-)

For eight years now we have 8 machines that are equipped with DataPort
Racks and trays. Just passive cooling and they have worked liked
Champs. They also cost a lot more those days.

I should hasten to add that these drives are only used to clone the C:
drive back and forth. So they may be only on for 10-30 minutes. But
even in the room where in the summer the temperature is always in the
high nineties. Never a problem.

Thanks again I shall have a look at them.

Am 30.04.2008 00:48 ken k wrote

You may also want to check out these:

1)
http://www.raidsonic.de/en/pages/pro..._objectID=4686
and
2)
http://www.raidsonic.de/en/pages/pro..._objectID=4589
or
3)
http://www.raidsonic.de/en/pages/pro..._objectID=4255

I have (1) and (3) in use and am very satisfied. They are compatible to
each other, meaning, that you can swap the disks between the internal
swap-frame and the external enclosure. Build quality is high. The
external is aluminium without fan at all, the internal has a small fan,
which I, surprisingley do not really hear (in my pretty silent case).


--
Bye,
Andreas M.

Andreas M. said the following on 5/2/2008 5:40 PM:
distributed by the same company. Do you have any experience with the
Icy Dock brand with relation to reliability and durability?

Thanks
Ken K

Ken:
I believe the mobile rack (removable HDD device) Andreas mentions is the Icy
Dock model available here in the U.S.

When we were experimenting with a variety of makes & models of mobile racks
designed for SATA HDDs a few years ago we did use a couple of Icy Dock
models - the MR123 SK-1. It's all-aluminum with a small (about 38mm) fan in
the rear. It was well-built (as Andreas has mentioned) and performed quite
well as I recall, however, the Icy Dock was equipped with the usual keylock
affair and we were particularly seeking a mobile rack device preferably
*without* a keylock mechanism (because of our work we're more-or-less
constantly inserting/removing the HDD trays to & from the rack) we
eventually settled on the Athena MR-125 (all-plastic) model which has a
sizeable 80mm fan bottom-mounted on the rack. The Athena has a simple
push-button lever device that makes it very simple for inserting/removing
the tray as well as activating/deactivating the HDD from the system.

We eventually sold the two Icy Dock models to one of our customers and AFAIK
he was quite satisfied with the device which I believe is still in use
today.

If I'm not mistaken, haven't I responded to one of your queries in this or
another newsgroup re mobile racks?
Anna

Anna said the following on 5/3/2008 9:09 AM:
response initially, posted in the other group, and then received
responses in both places.

WRT the lock, a friend has just tied a key onto the handle of each of
his Kingwin trays so that they are handy. I think I will purchase teh
Athena. The price is difficult to beat and I can use the "extra racks
in other computers to allow for easy transfer of large files.

Thanks again and apologies about the double post,
KK

On 30 Apr 2008 01:03:52 GMT, Arno Wagner <me@privacy.net> wrote:


I had LianLi plastick racks and they did have a small fan at the back
of the cage to help cool but the fan was so small that I doubt it
helped much. I disabled the fan and still had no issues with any of
the HDD's I installed into them and I used them as main OS drives too.
LianLi has aluminum racks too and I suppose they might be better as
the aluminum acts like a heatsink.

On 1 May 2008 02:23:54 GMT, Arno Wagner <me@privacy.net> wrote:


Lian LI makes good HDD racks. They make good computer cases too. Like
I said in my previous post, I used Lian Li racks for quite some time
(IDE and not the ones listed below) and never had an issue with them.
I don't use them any more because I used them as a trade with a
friend, but he is using them with no issues either.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...re= LIAN%2DLI

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:14:53 +0100, "Squeeze" <rubberduck@duckies.au>
wrote:


Yea, like tyhe Lian Li racks. I disabled the fan on mine and still
never had any heat issues and they were used as main OS HDD's too and
not just for back up. I checked the temp on tyhem and they were a few
degrees hotter than if they were installed with no rack but nothing
critical.