Lian Li RH-321 Mobile Rack

Supplied by LianLi

On the go

Hard drives never used to go anywhere but the hard drive has found new and
practical uses now that oodles of gigabytes are relatively inexpensive and that’s
thanks to the mobile rack. Mobile racks can be used to store, backup and transfer
data quickly and efficiently. Mobile racks can be allow for users to take projects
larger than floppy, zip or CD or DVD or DVD-RAM to another computer in the office
or to the home. Lian
Li manufactures 15 different mobile racks for both IDE and SCSI drives.
Are mobile racks just as fast as direct connect drives and just how easy are
they to use?

Lian Li manufactures 15 style of mobile racks which are differentiated by aesthetics,
hard drive speed and hard drive type (SCSI or IDE). The Lian
Li website splits these into three main groups; A, B and C. The review sample
is the RH-321 from the B
group shown in the following series of images.

Why go mobile?

There are several advantages to a mobile hard drive rack. In the graphic design
and video editing realm mobile hard drive racks allow for large amounts of data
to be quickly transferred to another system. Often single files easily surpass
1 or 2 GB in size so utilizing a CD is insufficient and DVD-R or RAM may take
to much time to transfer to and from the disk. In the television post production
business a project folder can easily pass 10 GB and contains many different
types of files that are interconnected. Transferring a rough cut of a video
timeline to the graphics department via a network connection would take hours.

A video editor could quickly transfer the finished rough cut or the entire
project folder to a mobile rack hard drive and give the entire rack to the graphic
artist thus the video editor could carry on with another project.

Using a mobile hard drive rack as a data storage or backup device is also very
practical. When the rack is pulled from its cradle it is powered down. If its
powered down the disks aren’t spinning and if the disks aren’t spinning there
is not wear and tear; the data just “sits there” until it is needed
again. Consider the following scenario:

Enthusiasts often run RAID setups to increase speed and a lot of times there
is a risk of breaking a stripe. This “stripe” ties the two or more
raided disks together and if its integrity deteriorates then the data may be
lost including those hard to find MP3’s, work files and those important DVD
movie backups. A solution to this is to run a mirror where a third drive backs
up the two raid drive but this slows performance. The mobile rack offers an
additional drive that can be used as a backup device for those important files
and even an image file of the OS/PROGRAM drive. Who cares if a stripe breaks
providing the user backs up the data on a semi-regular basis.

The Lian Li RH-321 Mobile Rack

Specifications:

• Interface:IDE.
• Disk Type:1″ height 3.5″ drive.
• Dimensions : 210x146x42mm.
• Single sleeve fan in the rear.
• Aluminum hard drive tray.
• Electronic key lock.
• ABS 94V0 fireproof plastic.
• Support ATA133 7200 RPM HDD.

The Lian Li RH-321 fits any standard 5.25″ external hard drive bay providing
there is at least 9-10 inches of depth from the bezel face. The unit is only
8 1/4″ inches deep but allow for the cable and molex connection.

The unit is not fireproof ABS plastic and only the sleeve or tray is aluminum.
This isn’t a complicated device. Open it up. Hook up a molex and an IDE cable
to the hard drive. Close it. Install it in an available drive bay. Connect the
IDE header cable and power. Reboot. That’s it. Format drive or use an existing
drive. (Providing the master/slave jumper is set correctly on the drive itself.)

It isn’t complicated but let’s make this into a multi-page review anyway. The
front has an electronic key lock to power on/off the unit, an LED for power
and hard drive activity and a swing-up handle.

The unit must be powered down before the drive can be pulled. The handle will
not swing up if the unit is powered on. The inner tray simply pulls out of the
caddy.

IMPORTANT: Do not lose the two keys. The keys allow for the unit to
be powered on and off and for the drive tray to be removed.

The handle does double duty. The first is to provide a point on which to grab
the inner tray to remove it. The second is that the handle partially pushes
back the spring loaded cover.

The cover pushes against the rear of the caddy pushing the unit away from the
connection bar. The next image is with the handle down and the one following
is with the handle up.

The data connection from the tray to the caddy is indeed a SCSI type connection.
It mates with the caddy.

The top cover to the tray is somewhat confusing to remove. The cover is spring-loaded
and the reason for that has already been shown but removing the cover itself
can be “interesting”. The instructions say to “open the top cover
by bending the ‘OPEN’ clip and slide top cover off.”

There was a lever which was promptly snapped off just before figuring out that
the “clip” is on the side and only needs to be pulled slightly away
from the tray for the cover to be removed. The clip is the triangular shape
just up and left of the visible screw. The lever, which was snapped off by reefing
on it like a bunch of monkeys, apparently did nothing to harm the function of
the unit.

After the clip was was gently pulled outwards the top cover slid off easily
to reveal the aluminum drive tray.

The installation is simple but a word of advice is to properly set the jumpers
on the hard drive before installing the drive into the unit. Also make sure
that if the drive is planned to move from system to system then make sure that
the drive caddy is in the same master of slave configuration. (On all PCs as
master or slave.)

The ribbon cable does remove. There’s nothing spectacular about that…just
thought I’d show you that it did.

The hard drive fit snug which is good as a hard drive rattling about in a aluminum
box isn’t good.

Slide the cover back on and it’s ready to plug into the caddy. One note. There
is an included package of 12 screws which their are three different types.

The long screws are for securing the hard drive to the tray.

And the other two are for mounting the caddy in an available external drive
bay. The larger thread screws are for the top set of screw holes.

IMPORTANT: Do not lose the two keys. The keys allow for the unit to
be powered on and off and for the drive tray to be removed.

The caddy has the standard ATA connection, molex 4-pin power and a 40mm. fan
which draws air from the front of the unit to the rear.

It’s an ADDA
40x40x10mm. generating 6.7 CFM at a silent 14 dB(A). It’s enough to move the
warm air out of the rack enclosure.

A standard feature on a lot of mobile racks is a spring loaded door flap.

It is more for aesthetics as a large gaping hole looks ugly and invites people
to deposit their trash, pens, paper clips, apple cores and whatnot into the
PC like a trash bin. The only concern is the drive door is plastic and may scratch
after repeated insertion of the drive tray.

The match of the ABS plastic to the aluminum finish of the Lian Li AMK 75 case
is quite good.

Lian Li also makes the removable hard drive racks in beige and black.

The test system…do mobile racks have lesser performance?

• 2 x AMD 2100+ MP
  Processor
• Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW+ motherboard
• Matrox Parhelia Video Card
• 4 x 256 MB Crucial Reg. ECC PC2100 RAM
• Sony 52x CD (IDE 1 master)
• LG 48x CDRW (IDE 2 master
• 60 GB Maxtor ATA133 Hard Drive on IDE 3 (ATA mode as master)
• 60 GB Maxtor ATA133 Hard Drive on IDE 4 (ATA mode as master)
• 2 x Samsung 950p 19″ Monitors
• USB Keyboard and Logitech USB wireless Optical Mouse
• Globalwin heatsinks
• AMK PC75 modded PC case (window, fans, cables, loom)
• Enermax 465 Watt FC PSU
• Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1

The two Maxtor ATA 133 60 GB drives were set up as master on each of the Promise
raid controllers. The controller was set to ATA or non-Raid mode so each drive
functioned uniquely. ATTO was used to bench mark the drive before and after
its move to the Lian Li Mobile Rack. A 3.5 GB folder containing 1864 files of
varying sizes was timed for transfer to the subject drive before and after the
move.

Some may think that using a mobile rack can slow hard drive performance. This
is just not true with the Lian Li mobile racks.

ATTO (Drive is directly connected to the IDE 4 Promise
raid header in ATA mode.)

ATTO (Drive is installed into Lian Li RH-321 and then
connected to the IDE 4 Promise raid header in ATA mode.)

Time taken to transfer 1864 files (3.5 GB total.)

The result is clear. There is not appreciable performance loss by installing
a drive in a Lian Li RH-321 Mobile Rack.

But what happens if?

But what happens if the drive isn’t formatted? Will Windows XP see
the drive?

Yes Windows XP will see the drive. Click on the COMPUTER MANAGEMENT icon in
the ADMINSTRATIVE TOOLS shortcut in CONTROL PANEL. A drive can be quickly partitioned
and formatted there.

But what happens when I pull the drive and reboot the computer?

Nothing. The computer will only see the drives that are hooked up to the system.
Make sure that the total number of partitions of all hard drives do not exceed
the available drive letters if there are partitions on the mobile rack hard
drive and the recipient system. (You won’t see all the partitions if you’ve
gone partition-happy with more than 22 partitions or devices total excluding
A: Floppy B: second floppy: C: OS and D: CDROM.

Drive letters will be assigned and will be the same each time in the recipient
system. (EG: If the hard drive rack is a single E: partition then it will always
be seen as E: in the recipient machine providing nothing new is added to the
recipient machine.)

But what happens if I power down the rack or remove it while the PC
is on?

It isn’t a wise idea as Windows will most likely freeze. The hard drive partition
ICONS will still remain and trying to access any of the mobile rack icons will
freeze the system. Lian Li mobile racks are not “hot swap-able”. In
other word the drive cannot be removed and replaced while the system is on and
still function normally.

But what happens if I do power down and remove the rack while the computer
is on?

We know you have to try. Chances are very good that no data will be lost and
a reboot will be needed to bring the PC back to full operation.

Can Lian Li mobile racks be used with other brands of mobile racks?

No. We believe the design is proprietary. Buy two and now you’ll have one tray
for a backup device and the other for a transfer device. Those in the graphic/video
design business will love mobile racks.

Can I use a mobile rack drive as the boot drive?

Yes you can but it would only be of some use if moving between 100% IDENTICAL
systems. Mobile rack drives are better as secondary drives in master or slave
configuration.

Conclusion

The pros and cons are quite simple. The amount of times I have had to restore
data from 10 or more CDs more than warrants the use of a mobile hard drive rack
as a backup device. The demand is even greater as my personal data becomes even
larger. Second to that is the ability to move a drive containing Gigs of data
between work and home. Since the mobile drive performs just like any other drive
I can work directly off the drive in the office then continue at home; one file
and no transferring. Getting a peripheral that matches the look of the PC case
is a benefit too. The high convenience factor and low hard drive price per GB
makes Lian Li mobile racks an asset to any PC.

Pros:

• Backup, store or transfer large amounts of data as quickly as a regular
  IDE hard drive.
• Work off the rack drive as if it were a regular direct connected drive.

Cons

• Not hot swap-able.
• Cannot change between master and slave without removing the drive from the
  tray.
• Not 100% aluminum construction.

Our appreciation to Lian
Li for their support of this site and so many others.