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SeanPPFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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USB2 rack system?

Hi.... I want to add a dvd burner and a hard disk or two, to my laptop. I have heard that it is possible to get a usb2 "caddy" which allows one to plug various desktop components in, and then connect to the USB2 port on my laptop. This is ideal as I have more than one laptop and would mean they could all share the components. I accept that i would only be able to use the components one at a time, but this would still be OK.
My question has 4 Parts, 1) is this a good idea or will this solution be horrendously slow/unreliable. 2) If this is such good idea how come there are not loads of these cadies about the place, and what is a recommended caddy. 3) what dvd burner would you reccomend. 4) what hard drive would you reccomend baring in mind i hope to use the caddy system. Please disregard questions 2-4 if you think theidea stinks in the first place!
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Adrian Dobrota
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Why did you not recommend a caddy. I was hoping that there might also be some cost and weight savings in going that route, otherwise i would just go with external units
I just find the external products more reliable, and as you say, you won't be able to use the devices at the same time.
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durindil

But if they are USB devices, you CAN use them all at the same time, unlike the caddy.  If you want to that is.
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ASKER

it is just that the idea of having 3 or 4 hard disks for back up is appealing and would cost the same as 2 external units.
Caddies are just empty USB enclosures. The connectors on atapi peripherals aren't standard so you can't just cram them into a bay the way you can 80 pin hotpug scsi drives.

You can get a 5 1/4 inch caddy and mount an atapi removable drive bay in it, but you'll have to get sleds for each drive and in the end might not save much, if anything.