Posts Tagged ‘Hard Drive Enclosure’

Posts Tagged ‘Hard Drive Enclosure’

Hard Drive Docking Stations – An Alternative to a Hard Drive Enclosure

Monday, June 29th, 2009

If you’ve got a lot of hard disks drives that you use on a regular basis or perhaps you’re an IT or Support Engineer and your job involves testing hard drives then you might want to consider a Hard Drive Docking station rather than a hard drive enclosure.

Whilst Hard Drive Enclosures are excellent at providing protection for the hard drive and they’re available in a range of interface types, styles and colours they still typically need a few minutes to set up. This is because there are normally a few screws that hold the case together and a couple of screws that are used to hold the hard drive in place in the enclosure. You want these if you are building a permanent or semi-permanent back-up or external storage solution. You want to be comforted by know your hard drive is safe in the enclosure, particularly if you’re carrying it around with you.

But, if you need to check lots of disks on a regular basis and your time is valuable then an alternative is a Hard Drive Docking Station. These relatively new products are typically permanently connected to your PC or Mac via USB and you then simply “slot” or “dock” the hard drive into the “docking station”. They also have their own power supply, which in turn powers the hard drive.

Once installed in the docking station the hard drive will be picked up by the PC and within a couple of seconds you can be interrogating the hard drive, retrieving data or backing up data to the drive. When you’ve finished simply remove the hard drive from the docking station. There are no screws, no connections to mess with you just pop it in and take it out. It that simple that you can do it all one handed!

The Docking Stations support hard drives from laptops (2.5” HDD’s) and from Towers/Desktops (3.5” HDD’s) so not only are they easy and quick to use but they’re incredibly flexible as well.

If you’re worried about losing one of your USB Ports by having the docking station permanently connected then don’t because many version of these have a USB Hub built into the base of the unit to give you 3 extra USB ports as well.

So if you’re looking for speed and simplicity of use and you’re not worried about providing a case around the hard drive to protect it and make transportation easy then you might consider a Hard Drive Docking Station

Hard Drive Docking Station

Hard Drive Docking Station

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RAID Hard Drive Enclosures – When one Hard Drive is not enough

Monday, June 29th, 2009

If you’ve got a large amount of data to back up or store then rather than looking at a standard Hard Drive Enclosure into which you install one Hard Drive you could consider a Dual Bay RAID Enclosure.

DUAL Bay enclosures as the name suggests support two separate Hard Disk Drives, which significantly increases the amount of data you can save externally. But Dual BAY RAID Enclosures go one step further an provide you with a number of additional options:

RAID 0: If you set up these enclosure to support RAID 0 then both of the installed Hard Disk Drives will show up as one large “virtual” drive. So if you install say two separate 1TB SATA Hard Drives you’ll end up with a “virtual” drive of 2TB.

RAID 1: Alternatively if you set up both installed Hard Disk Drives to utilize RAID 1 (Mirroring Mode) then any data saved to the Drives in the enclosure will automatically be mirrored to the 2nd drive. In effect one of the hard drives in the enclosures becomes the primary back up and the other becomes the secondary back up. Data copied or “mirrored” to the secondary back up is copied automatically.

If you have critical data then using a Dual Bay Enclosure with RAID 1 is a sensible option as it give you a real “belt and braces” approach to the back up of your data.

RAID Hard Drive Enclosures illustrate just how far these products have come over the years and reflect how much data we are all now storing or should be storing and backing up on a regular basis.

Whilst there are complete Dual Drive and RAID enclosures already pre-packaged on the market with the hard drives pre-installed an enclosure provides a much more cost effective solution. Once the preserve of businesses Dual Bay Raid enclosures are now making their way into the home. As more people save digital photos, music, family films and movies to their PC this trend is only set to increase.

When shopping for RAID enclosures bear in mind that most of them will only support the newer, faster SATA Hard Disks Drives and not IDE, ATA or PATA Hard Drives.

RAID Dual Bay Hard Drive Enclosure

RAID Dual Bay Hard Drive Enclosure

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New Stocks of Hard Disk Enclosure with “One Touch back-up” now in

Monday, June 29th, 2009

New stocks of the Hard Drive Enclosure from the highley regarded manufacturer Hotway are now back in stock. These proved so popular last time we had them that we’ve had to rush more stocks in to keep up with demand. The extra “one touch” back-up button makes backing up your files, musics, pictures etc. a doddle a gives you complete peace of mind.

At less than £10 they’re an absolute steal – the top quality case they come with is worth the money alone!

Hard Drive Enclosure

Hard Drive Enclosure

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New Range of Hard Drive Enclosures due in on 23rd June’09

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Tomorrow sees the delivery of a range of new Hard Drive Enclosures to add to our already impressive range. Be sure to check back tomorrow if you’re in the market for a HDD Caddy but best leeave it till the afternoon to give us time to get them on the site!

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Are “One Touch Back Up” Hard Drive Enclosures worth the extra money?

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

There are lots of Hard Drive Enclosures available on the market for 2.5” and 3.5” Hard Drives. Often the distinguishing features between them (apart from the obvious size) are whether they are for IDE or SATA Hard Disk Drives and whether they connect via USB or USB and Firewire.

Of course for many the aesthetics of the Hard Drive Enclosure (also often referred to as a HDD caddy or HDD case) are important because you’ll often want the enclosure to match with the other bits of kit you’ve got on your desk or in your home office. For some features likes fans or flashing lights are also key.

One further consideration you might give is ease of use and ease of making back-ups to the Hard Drive in the Hard Drive Enclosure. The later point is particularly pertinent because for many the primary reason to buy an enclosure and build an external storage solution is data back up. Given how much information we now store on our PC’s including family photos, movies, music collections and of course work files, backing up our cherished data (and our work) is critical.

Ease of data backup is helped if you buy a hard drive enclosure with a built in “One-touch” back up button built into it. These enclosures are supplied with software that is easy to load and simple to use. The software allows you to define which directories, sub-directories, folders, files and even specific files that you want to back up. When you then press the backup button on the enclosure the files you have elected to back up with automatically be copied from your PC to the Hard Drive in the enclosure.

This feature, whilst not something everyone will need, is an excellent option. It takes the guesswork out of what you need to back up and because it’s so easy to do its far more likely you will actually back up your important data. A good routine to get into is to press the back-up button before you power off the PC for the day.

The fact an enclosure has a back-up button built in does not impair its use in any other way. You can still copy, save, retrieve data from the hard drive just as you would using any hard drive enclosure. There’s no compromise on the types of Hard Disk Drives that can be used, the connection options or the styling. What you will have do however is pay a small premium for a case with this feature but given the costs of not backing up your data it’s a small price to pay.

Find the correct HDD Enclosure for you. Take a look at some of the following:
External Drive Enclosures, 1.8″ Hard Drive Cases, 2.5″ Hard Drive Cases, 3.5″ Hard Drive Cases, 5.25″ Hard Drive & Optical Drive, IDE & SATA Cable Kits, Freecom Hard Drives, Fujitsu Hard Drives

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