SDCS Makes Drives Portable

The SDCS consists of an aluminum drive enclosure about the size of a VHS tape and a 5.25-inch aluminum drive cradle. Cradles come in two versions: IDE and Universal Storage Interface Bus. Enclosures come in three versions: IDE, IDE/USIB and Serial ATA/USIB. The USIB connector, in conjunction with various adapter cables, lets a peripheral connect to USB, SATA, PCMCIA or FireWire drives.

The simplest configuration of the SDCS is an IDE drive enclosure and IDE drive cradle. An IDE hard drive installs inside the drive enclosure and the drive cradle installs in an empty 5.25-inch drive bay. Power and data connections from the motherboard and power supply are made to the back of the drive cradle instead of to the drive itself. With a hard drive installed, a drive enclosure slides in and out of a cradle much like a RAID array, automatically making the connections between the drive and the system.

Drive enclosures can be locked into the cradle to prevent theft. Desktop systems also can be set up with a fixed boot disk and interchangeable data disk that can be swapped while the system is running. An IDE enclosure, drive cradle and cable cost about $90. A SATA/USIB drive enclosure, USIB drive cradle and SATA/USIB cable cost $100.

With the SDCS installed, a hard drive can be used in a desktop system and then taken elsewhere and used externally. The peripheral can be connected to a desktop or notebook computer via USB 2.0, FireWire, SATA or CardBus/PCMCIA simply by using the appropriate USIB cable.