Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
One good solution to this problem is to install a removable hard drive bay in
your system. Such bays fit into an external 5.25” drive bay and are connected to
a standard SATA data cable and power cable. The front of the removable drive
bay has an opening that accepts a standard 3.5” desktop hard drive, which you
can just slide in and out as needed. (You will have to enable AHCI in your BIOS
and operating system if you want to hot-swap drives.)
Removable hard drive bays have several advantages. They accept standard
desktop hard drives, which are inexpensive (relative to external drives) and
appear to the computer as just another hard drive. Because the drives use the
SATA interface, they are as fast as an internal drive. Because the removable
drive bay accepts any standard SATA hard drive, you can recycle older hard
drives that you've retired when upgrading a system. And, when you leave
home, it's much easier to carry a bare hard drive in a plastic shell or wallet than
it is to disconnect and haul an external hard drive around with you. (Be careful
when removing a hard drive; depending on how hot-running the drive is and
how long it's been running, it may be too hot to touch.)
We've used several models of removable drive bays, but our favorite is the
Antec
Easy SATA
(
http://www.antec.com
)
. It just works, and at $20 or so, there's no
reason not to install one.
Harddrivedockingstations
Hard drive docking stations are similar conceptually to removable hard drive
bays, but they are external devices rather than internal. Like removable drive
bays, docking stations use the SATA/eSATA interface, and so support hot-
swapping.
A typical hard drive docking station holds one or two 3.5” desktop hard drives
or 2.5” notebook hard drives vertically in a plastic or metal base, is powered by
a wall wart, and connects to the computer with an eSATA cable(s). The hard
drives are exposed and can be inserted or removed simply by sliding them
into or out of the docking station. (Once again, for hot-swapping you'll need
to enable AHCI in your BIOS and operating system.)
The disadvantage of a hard drive docking station versus a removable drive
bay is that the docking station adds desktop clutter. The advantage is that
the docking station is the most cost-efficient way of using removable hard
drives. For example, the hard drive docking station we recommend, the
SYBA
SD-ENC50020
(
http://www.syba.com
)
, sells for about $25 and holds two hard
drives simultaneously.
VideoAdapters
The
video adapter
, also called a
graphics adapter
, renders video data provided
by the processor into a form that the monitor can display. Many motherboards
include embedded (integrated) video adapters. You can also install a stand-
alone video adapter, also called a
video card
or
graphics card
, in a PCI Express
expansion slot. Keep the following in mind when choosing a video adapter:
