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There are two models on the market right now, the MRK102FD and the MRK-103F, and apart from an LCD display and a few other features they are virtually identical.
78% Rating: 
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Vantec EZ-Swap |
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A better look at the EZ-Swap
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Access is easy, but the little locks while working in three
positions, do not offer any real security. The locks can be covered by the
small flip-up tab which then acts has a handle to open up the rest of the
bay for removal. |
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The dust blocker in action - "Dust beware, Vantec is here!" - sorry
couldn't resist :) |
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The rear of the unit is equipped with a fan which is of questionable
usefulness since more than half of it is covered by the frame of the
caddy. |
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The pin connectors are good quality as you can see and make for a
solid connection when everything is locked into place. The older
printer-style connectors have caused a lot of problems for me in the past
so this was a welcome sight. |
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The three small cables are for setting Master/CS/Slave on the drive.
In principle this makes master and slave settings controllable by the front
LCD display, but given the different types of jumper settings on hard
drives this can be difficult to set up. Note the blue thermistor to the
right-hand side. |
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The Vantec MRK102FD and MRK 103F are both well built and potentially feature
packed removable HDD racks. The plain version is just the same old thing we are
all used to with a much improved back plane and the same underpowered and
partially hidden fan. The MRK103F is a good unit all the same and not a unit I
would be too worried about using with a good ATA100 hard drive.
Its brother unit, the MRK102FD comes with all the bells and whistles, and
although knowing the temperature of the hard drive is cool, it is really
something which most consumers will not know how to change. The small fan is not
going to provide heaps of cooling and that means options are limited. The added
master and slave settings by the LCD panel are really cool and I could see
several uses for that just in the realm of everyday testing. Most of all, these
drives just look a lot better than their standard OEM counter parts. If Vantec
can keep the cost of these units to good levels I think they have a pretty
worthwhile removable IDE hard drive rack on the market.
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