Vantec EZ-Swap impressions

[Guden Oden]

Just installed this LCD-equipped swappable harddrive bay in my pooter, and I must say I'm fairly disappointed.

Not that the quality's bad. No actually, that is pretty good. It's the NOISE that's bugging me! It's got this little whiny bitch of a 40mm fan at the back of the unit, and having three harddrives spinning all at once isn't helping either even though all of them have hydrodynamic bearings. I suppose it's resonance I hear, I got a foam rubber pad to put under my PC, I will do that later and see if it helps.

It's like, my computer WAS quiet, and now it isn't anymore. Fuck, I have to find another fan to try it with, this is crazy. Or maybe try it without a fan at all. I could possibly remove the top cover and just let the aluminium bay act as a heatsink, if I could somehow disable the fan alarm that is! I bet the beeping would drive me even nutser than I already am right now...

Anyone know of the maker of a quiet 40mm fan? I don't even know where to find these anymore! Would like a Sunon maglev unit, those bearings last a good while, but I don't know where to buy them. Have to look around...

 

[Guden Oden]

Ok, further impressions after a couple days' use:

The unit looks rather nice, black plastic bezel and green-glowing backlit LCD, with a "silver"-look plastic latch for the drive cartridge. It integrates well into the front of my black Dell.

The cartridge itself is made out of extruded aluminium; the bottom is sort of shaped like a tub to which the drive is screwed from below, and then there is a metal cover that slides in on top that snaps into place. The "tub" is made of fairly thick metal, which should absorb and transport heat and spread it out over a larger surface. There are also some heatsink-like ridges on the outside, though not on the inside, which would have been beneficial. In the end I don't think it really matters though, as passive heat transfer is a fairly slow and laborious process. The major part of the cooling is undoubtedly handled by the integrated fan.

The drive connects to a short internal 80-lead ATA66-style flat cable, a power cable and three short leads that attach to the jumper pins of the drive so the user can set master/slave. These leads connect to a block of four DIP switches at the back of the device; three that controls each jumper on the drive, and the fourth setting either master or slave on the backlit LCD display. Unfortunately there is no way to set/display cable select option, but I still set the jumper cables on the drive for cable select, then installed the device in the master position of the IDE cable and flipped the LCD DIP switch for master as well. Worked just fine.

The all-aluminium construction and fan makes the drive keep a comparable temperature to my other drives; about 41C as measured by SpeedFan (or is it FanSpeed? not sure!); the temp display on the LCD says exhaust air is about 33.5C.

When the cartridge is removed, there's a spring-loaded door that flips down to cover the internal bay, not that I really care, as I never will remove the cartridge anyway, but it's there and it looks nifty. There's also a lock of course - like on all devices of this kind I guess - with three positions on it. Locked + powered, locked + unpowered (which may or may not prevent your PC from booting I guess if it detects there is a drive attached that isn't responding), and - surprise - unlocked and unpowered; thus allowing the cartridge to be pulled out.

No word in the brief and flimsy manual sheet what happens if the bay is switched off and removed while the PC is running. When I turned the key on a cheaper bay years and years ago in a PC I owned way back, the auto-fuse in the power supply triggered and shut everything off. D'OH. Somehow I don't feel like trying with this one just to see what happens...

So apart from the noise aspect - the only really bad aspect of this product - I have to say I'm very pleased. 5.25" devices have to be screwed into this case using special weird screws with fine threads as found on optical devices, and I was pleasantly surprised to see Vantec is following standards here and have made out the screw-holes of this thing with the standardized fine threads. It slid right in and locked into place, very nice!

And, the green display glows in an impressive manner too. Also very nice. The actual information it displays doesn't really matter much, I just like that it glows. There's a drive activity indicator, temperature display + master/slave indicators as mentioned as well as fan and heat indicators. These flash if either alarm triggers, and a (very loud) buzzer beeps also.

As the harddrive is sharing IDE channel with my DVD writer I have to assume it is running at ATA33 speed, ATA66 at most, but I've exercised the drive good, and the extra connections and extension cable hasn't caused any data corruption issues. Nor should it either, as the thing's rated for ATA133 operation, but it never hurts to make sure.

So, I guess, 8/10 would be a fair score. I'd give it more if the fan had been quiet, but there ya go...

 

[Pete]

Without having read that huge second post of yours, and thus not knowing anything about the unit except the noisy 40mm fan, have you tried either 5-/7-volting it, or (if you have the space) replacing it with a small (Nidec) blower?