MacGurus
Burly Hotswap SATA Enclosure Kits

 

 

 The MacGurus Burly Hotswap Kit is the slickest way to build a versatile external SATA enclosure for your Mac or PC that you can find. The super easy to install hotswap bays make this a snap. Requiring just a philips screw driver and minimal experience to assemble, these kits are the perfect answer to your needs. Check out the MacGurus Roll Your Own Hotswap Guide for detailed instructions on the assembly of these kits.

 

 SATA external enclosures have all the performance benefits of internal drives. Directly connected to the host card there are no adapters or bridges soaking up performance as they change your data signal from one type to the next like Firewire does. The 7 pin shielded external SATA cables come in your choice of 1 or 2 meter lengths, are easy to route, tough enough for years of use and capable of full bandwidth on your data transfers. The great hotswap trays allow you to easily swap in extra drives for unlimited capacity. Couldn’t be less expensive either with additional low cost trays under . The tray entirely covers and protects the drives in an aluminum container that can be stored off site with the assurance your drives and data are safe. This is the perfect method for unlimited capacity super fast archival backup storage. Tired of tapes? Here’s your answer. These trays are also easily dropped in your briefcase for transport to/from home and work or to customer's jobsite.

Host Cards:

 Available in 2, 4, 5 and 8 Bay systems, with or without drives. The kits come complete with all the parts you need except the host card. These you will need to purchase separately from the kit. If you are not sure which card will fit your computer, please contact us.

Drives:

 We highly recommend the Hitachi Deskstar and the beastly fast Seagate lineup on our SATA Hard Drive page. These are the best performing, most reliable drives on the market today, leading in most every performance catagory the 7200 RPM drive class. The 7200 Seagate drives are pushing past 100 MB/sec transfer speeds. Absolutely incredible. With a 3 year warranty and class leading performance the Seagate drives are our favorites.

LCD Hotswap Bays!

  Optional LCD Hotswap Bays available. These are the same high quality trays as our standard Hotswap Bays but also incorporate an LCD readout giving you direct monitoring of the status of your drives. Installation is the same. Check the options button to add these to your order. The LCD monitors temperatures and has an audible over temp alarm.

HotSwap Capability:

  All of the external host cards that we offer are Hotswap capable. Both Mac users with those host cards and our PC brethern will find these enclosures will work with full hotswap capability for them on their hotswap capable host cards. With any host card you can remove drives in hotswap bays without shutting down. You just drag the drives to the trash to dismount them, and then remove the tray. With non-hotswap capable host cards you will need to have the drives powered up and attached before booting up your computer when you mount them. This is not necessary with the Hotswap hosts which allow you to power up the enclosure while the computer remains running and they will hot mount the drives.

Cabling:

 Most external host cards currently available have eSATA connectors. Be sure to select either the 1 meter or 2 meter eSATA-eSATA cables when ordering your Burly. The Burly enclosure has eSATA connectors.

 With the internal host cards currently available, which is mostly the hardware RAID cards, methods to route your cables out the backplane of your Mac are necessary. Many users currently just run the cables in through an empty PCI slot and attach to the internal ports of their SATA host card. Until an external port SATA host card comes available that is one option that works OK as long as the cables don’t get pulled on. Internal connectors aren’t well designed for that type of abuse. Others users modify the metal plate on the card by drilling holes or cutting slots to allow the cables to route out through the same slot as the card. Be aware that card manufacturers may not accept warranty responsibility for cards modified this way.

 MacGurus recommended installation is to run the PCI Adapter plate with a pair of cables running in to the host card. This uses up an additional PCI slot but is clean and neat. If you are using four or more drives externally then you probably won’t have that option. The 8 Port Internal to External SATAPORT Adapter is a great way to route cables from as many as eight total ports. The internal port SATA cards have the internal cables necessary to connect from host card to adapter. If you go this route, be sure to select eSATA - Type A cables when purchasing your Burly.

eSATA

 eSATA connections, originally known as the Type B+ connector, are now on most all host cards for both PCs and Macs. This external SATA specification uses a different connector that unfortunately looks so similar as to be easily mistaken on first glance for the more common Type A SATA connection. Because of that you will need to pay particular attention to the cables you select with your Burly. You can select between 1 meter and 2 meter cables. If you use a host card with a TYPE A connector, be sure to choose the eSATA-TYPEA option on your cable selection. The Burly enclosure has eSATA connectors.

 

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