Disk enclosure Part 2
RAID Recovery - Disk enclosure
Different form factors
2.5 inch drive enclosures: The 2.75-inch wide form factor is used in notebook computers and other slim PC models. These drives consume less power, and they are mostly powered directly from the host device’s USB or other external bus.
1.8 inch drive enclosures: They are the smallest such devices and are used in compact devices such as certain portable media players and smaller notebooks.
Advantages of using external disk enclosures
- Give additional storage space to small PCs and laptops.
- Add RAID capabilities to computers that lack RAID controllers or lack sufficient space for additional drives.
- Add additional drives to any server or workstation.
- Transfer data between isolated computers.
- Recover data from the hard drive of a damaged computer.
- Cost-effective alternative to hot swapping
- Add a removable backup source with separate power supply from the connected computer.
Drive protocols
Native protocols such as SCSI, SAS, Fibre Channel, and eSATA are used to directly connect external hard drive to an internal host adapter. This process does not require any intervening controller.
Direct attach serial protocols
USB or FireWire connections require circuitry to convert the hard disk’s native signal to the appropriate protocol. Parallel ATA and internal Serial ATA hard disks are frequently connected to such chassis.
Network protocols
Protocols such as iSCSI, NFS, or Windows File Sharing are commonly used in Network-attached storage (NAS). These are embedded computers which usually run operating systems such as Linux or VxWorks.
Summary: A disk enclosure not only acts as a chassis, but it also offers connectivity to external devices. It also powers the disk drives. Different form factors of disk enclosures are available according to the sizes of the storage devices available.
