I have been using bare drives for years with no ill effects. Not having a case, they lose heat readily enough so that no fan is needed (I monitor with a digital infrared thermometer and rarely see temps exceeding 130 degrees F; usually it is about 15 degrees cooler).

I now run long (24") SATA cables & power cables out of the cabinet and hook up the drives as needed. At this moment, I have 2.5 terabytes of hard drives connected, 2.25 of which are external (four 750 GB drives). Two of those 4 are mounted as folders in the other two so that I can run two as backup drives for the 2 project drives and sync all four with one click on Synchronize It! - easy-to-use and inexpensive software which I run a couple of times each day (simpler than setting up four Raid redundant pairs, especially since I may want to swap out the 4 drives for others if I need to work on another project before finishing the first). The folder trick is a neat way to get past the 1TB max drive size currently available as a single drive (I was running out of space on the 750 GB hard drives for my current HDV project); now my 4 drives are seen by Synchronize It! as simply a pair of drives needing to be synchronized.

When I'm done with a project, I store the hard disks in "fire-proof" safes (so far, 3 of them) from Wallmart. As was noted on a previous thread a year or two ago, paper doesn't burn until the temperature rises above the maximum limit that would destroy hard disks, but the thermal mass of hard drives (each box holds 20 or 30 drives) is so much greater than paper that my guess is that the drives inside the safes would remain cool enough to survive all but the hottest of fires; and the boxes are designed to shed water pouring down from above from fire hoses. When all is considered, it seems obvious that my data are much more secure than when the disks are mounted inside a vulnerable computer box. (I also keep the safes on the floor to provide some protection against earthquakes.)

I've been using this Thermaltake BlacX docking station for a few months. It's great and is a screaming deal for $25. There are two minor downsides to this device; when I'm heavily accessing a drive mounted in the BlacX, the drive tends to get pretty hot. I just set a spare 80mm fan on top of the drive blowing down and the drive stays nice and cool. The other downside is the USB2 interface is only good for transfer rates of about 25 to 30 megabytes/sec. Thermaltake just introduced a third version of the BlacX with both USB2 and eSATA. The eSATA version is MUCH faster.

You can see all three versions here:

http://thermaltakeusa.com/product/Storage/hdd_station/hdd_station.asp

Can eSata be hooked up without having to install an "eSata" card?
I have no slots left
If so, please explain for the computer challenged. (that's me)
Thank you

eSATA uses a different connector that is a a bit more rugged for repeated insertions. It also has a bit wider latitude on the voltages to compensate for additional cable length. Otherwise it is that same as SATA. If your motherboard has a spare SATA port, you can probably get an slot cover adapter to get the port outside of the computer to the drive. It's basically has a standard SATA connector on the inside and an eSATA connector on the outside. It also has a power connector.

One other thing to consider is that SATA isn't hot-swapable unless you have compliant hardware and are running Vista. USB is hot-swapable, but MUCH slower than SATA.

You could also get a Kingwin KF-91 SATA mobile rack with some additional trays. This would be cheaper than the eSATA BlacX. It wouldn't take up a slot and drive cooling wouldn't be an issue either. I've got a few of these and they work great.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121172

Thanks......Oh boy, I think I'm learning something new. New to me, anyway
Well, I have at least two extra SATA hookups for HDDs in my PC
You're saying a 'slot cover adapter' will convert me from SATA to eSATA? (sorry, I don't understand this SATA stuff)
Will I get the full 3Gbps?
I have just seen some External boxes that have both eSATA and USB2.0, mostly fanless, but starting at around $22. A few claim 1.5Gbps while most say 3Gbps. ???? But, I think almost all claim to work with Windows XP and make it sound like drives are swap-able.
I would like something that would be very fast for me (eSATA), but I could occasionally take out for file transferring elsewhere (USB2.0).
Is this what I need?
http://www.satasite.com/esata-port-adapter-dual.htm

Yes, you'll get the full 3Gbps assuming that both the SATA port on the motherboard and the hard drive are 3Gbps.

Yes, that's the adapter you need.

If you have a spare 5.25" bay open in your computer then, all things considered, the Kingwin docking bay is may be a better way to do it.

You also need power besides that adapter. Otherwise you could just take loose SATA hard drives and plug them in whenever you wanted. So the power either has to be routed out of the computer case or an external power supply has to be provided.

The newly proposed SATA-IO standard due to be released later this year is supposed to provide power over an e-SATA connector only, but will only be good for 2.5 inch hard drives. It will receive competition from USB 3.

The BlacX only works with SATA hard drives so if you wanted to back up or store data onto cheap IDE drives you can't.

I chose the removeable mobile rack with IDE to SATA dongle attached for mine. The rack is made for Monoprice by Bytecc.

It has an IDE hard drive in it all the time that is recognized by the motherboard and XP as a SATA drive and I use it like any other drive in the computer. When I want to swap it I shut down the computer and put a different IDE drive in the drawer and power it up. Has the same drive letter. It also doesn't appear to slow down the system either in practical use.
Since the drawers are so cheap I picked up more than one of them so that I can just insert a drawer with the drive already in it. I also use it to clone my boot drive using Ghost. Better than backup software, I can make an exact replica of my main hard drive weekly.

It doesn't support hot-swapping, but I wouldn't recommend that anyway.

The only issue I can see with the mobile racks is for those who have doors on the front of their computer cases. Some doors don't have enough clearance for some mobile racks.

John