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Final Words
Hard Drive caddy's are nothing new but as with more and more items from manufacturers lately, Vantec have added a host of useful extra's to give them the edge above the competition. The LCD display is a very nice touch, looking good and displaying a nice set of information at a glance in a clear and easy format. The setting of the display is simple, as it should be. The whole front of the unit is styled very nicely with a lot of recessed features and curves.
The caddy slides in and out easily and whilst the door latch isn't the greatest it does close first time if the latch is put into the closed position before shutting the door. It does mean however you have to then partway open the latch to gain access to the 3 stage lock. At the rear, the 40mm cooling fan is in my opinion not going to do much if anything at all since the actual guide for the air to pass through is less than a ¼ of the size of the fan diameter.
The whole HDD is pretty much surrounded and touching aluminium so this might help keep temperatures down on its own. The temperature alarm is loud enough to be heard throughout my house so should be loud enough in say a server room with the air conditioning and other devices running. Being able to set the temperature maximum is good, but more so in that if it was a fixed amount that would reduce the usefulness depending on the user's situation.
The dip switches for setting the drive configuration is a great idea, saving you time having to keep removing the drive to change the jumpers, although I would suggest that new users would like more listings in the instructions for drives other than IBM or Seagate. However there is enough information in the instructions tables to logically work out the correct settings needed. The unit is quite long and in small towers could butt up easily against your motherboard, meaning that if it is installed on the same channel as another IDE device, you will have to make sure your leads can reach between the two.
As for overall usefulness, this is something that you will have to work out on your own. The unit performs excellently and looks damn good whilst doing it, but if you have no need to keep swapping drives there's no point in getting one of these. But with more and more people running multiple operating systems the benefits are obvious. You can easily place Windows on one hard drive and say Linux on another, keeping them totally separate from one another, removing any possible headaches setting up such a system.
Backing up data to another drive for safe and large storage is another possible use, saving you time burning CD's and allowing for a greater range of possibilities in your backup procedures. In a server environment having the LCD display all that useful information at a glance has obvious advantages. Another thing that should be obvious is that for true EZ Swapping you will need a second caddy, as having to keep changing the drive that's in the caddy defeats the purpose of the unit.
One thing I haven't mentioned yet is the price, which for such a product is in my opinion great. are selling these at current time of writing for , low enough to make them very good value for money considering all the plus points the product has. The bad points the unit carries are pretty much either trivial at best, or simply not a hindrance in use. Many thanks to for supplying us with the Vantec EZ-Swap Mobile IDE rack MRK-102FD-SL.
Pros
Looks dead sexy
LCD displays useful info at a glance
Easy system setup
Nice jumper configuration solution
Overheat protection
Caddy slides in and out easily
Aluminium construction could aid in cooling
The price
Cons
Only 2 drives listed for wiring instructions
Front door latch can be finicky
Need 2 units (or at least a second caddy) for true EZ swapping
Cooling fan is next to useless
Very long, could cause some people installation problems
Bottom Line
If you're looking for a Mobile IDE solution you should take a good look at this one. The LCD display information, ease of use and the price make it a winner.
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Vantec EZ-Swap Mobile IDE Rack: Hard Drive caddy's are nothing new but as with more and more items from manufacturers lately, Vantec have added a host of useful extra's to give them the edge above the competition.
