OT: Hot Swap Single drive Tray Recommendations

Cliff Etzel wrote on 12/8/2008, 1:14 PM

Tried using the term "Hot Swap" but only gave one search result.

I'm looking to find a way to hot swap a single hard drive for each of my projects - that way I can plug the drive in the removable bay and double click on the project file, have it open up in Vegas Pro and not have to worry about resetting path statements for various files eachtime.

Any recommendations?

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | solo video journalism blog

Comments

DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/8/2008, 1:40 PM

This isn't exactly a chassis that installs in your PC, but rather a dock that sits outside and connects via USB 2.....oh and it comes with a 1 TB drive all for $100 AR

<edit>re: searching, you might also try "removable drive"

Fredv wrote on 12/8/2008, 5:12 PM

Dave,

What kind of drives can be used? IDE or SATA?

That's JUST what I've been looking for to offline content!

John_Cline wrote on 12/8/2008, 5:21 PM

I just bought a few of these and they're great! Internal docking bay without trays. You just place a bare drive in it and shut the door.

http://www.addonics.com/products/mobile_rack/aesnapmrsa.asp

I prefer these to external docks, like the Thermaltake BlacX, because these have active cooling, which is necessary if you're going to be using the drives in an lengthy editing situation.

USB and Firewire is truly hot-swappable, whether you can hot-swap drives hooked up via SATA is dependent on your SATA chip on the motherboard. You may have to shut the machine off, swap the drives and reboot. Of course, SATA is vastly faster than USB or Firewire.

DavidMcKnight wrote on 12/8/2008, 6:34 PM

Fredv - both products mentioned use SATA only. That's the only type of drive that can be hot-swapped AFAIK.

seanfl wrote on 12/8/2008, 6:39 PM

I've used this one with good success:

blacx esata drive enclosure

Only drawback for some users: it doesn't spin down after no access (which could be good for video editors. Comments on newegg says it isn't hot swap. I've always hit the power button, swapped out a drive, then powered it back on with no problems (not quite hot swap, but might work for what you want).

Sean
broadcast voiceovers

craftech wrote on 12/8/2008, 7:26 PM

I think an internally mounted hard drive drawer is probably what you are looking for. I have an IDE version of this that I use. It has a SATA dongle on the back so it can plug into the motherboard. I bought it when IDE hard drives were less expensive than SATA drives. Now I would use the one I linked.

John

Fredv wrote on 12/9/2008, 6:14 PM

Thanks, Dave. I'm going to get one next week after payday. This is JUST what I need to offline a lot of media that I need to save. Thanks for posting the information, and thanks to the others for their links!

farss wrote on 12/10/2008, 6:04 AM

SATA is only hot swapable under Vista and only with some controller chips as far as I know.
USB and Firewire is hot swapable.

Bob.

Xander wrote on 12/10/2008, 7:08 AM

I use the BYTECC BT-135E-BK 3.5" SATA Aluminum Drive Case - Retail with the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (bare drive) - OEM. Works well in Vista 64. I like the fact that the bay has a fan and is locked using a key.