Overclocker Cafe - Kingwin KF-72 SATA Hard Drive Rack

Kingwin KF-72 SATA Mobile Hard Drive Rack

Manufacturer: Kingwin Inc.
Supplied by: Kingwin Inc.
Price: ~$35.00

By Dean Barker (7/6/2003)

Introduction

Those of you who have been coming around here for a while know that I love portable storage. When you get right down to the root of things, it’s all about the transfer of data. Be it files from your office, UT maps, family pictures or even video files, the ability to physically move your data (as in VERY large chunks) from place to place is a big plus. A friend of mine is really big into MP3s and has almost 400 gigs of music. This is too much to move around on handful of burned CDs. A couple of hard drives in conjunction with a HDD rack do the job much better and keep things more organized in the process. I think my point about the utility of portable data and hard drive racks is illustrated now.

Serial ATA hard drives are slowly taking the market over. With this in mind, Kingwin has produced a removable hard drive rack made specifically for SATA drives. Its basic design is familiar but there are a few very notable changes from their previous models. We want to extend our thanks to Kingwin for making this review possible. With that, let’s start out with some specs. Let me point out firstly that the specs listed on the Kingwin site as of this writing must be for another unit as the picture there nor the specs match the unit sent to us marked as the KF-72 rack.

Specifications

• Observed Dimensions: 229 x 150 x 42mm (L x W x H)
• Observed Weight: 448gms
• Cooling: Single 40mm fan
• Construction: ABS Plastic
• Interface: Serial ATA only
• Two position drive key lock
• Single LED (power)
• Available in black or beige

The Unit

The KF-72 is offered in black or traditional beige as you can see. The front bezel sports a two position key lock. When unlocked, no power is relayed to the drive and it may be removed by a hinged handle on its face. In the locked position, power is sent to the drive and it cannot be removed while in use. A single power indicator LED is present. Absent was a hard drive activity light to show when your drive is being accessed. No big deal but it would have been nice.

Moving to the rear of the unit, we see a 40mm fan set up to pull air through and out. Rather, pull air from the vents you see on the front bezel and out through the fan out the rear. Also visible, are a four-pin Molex connector and a SATA data connector. Too bad Kingwin didn't include a SATA cable to connect the rack to the mainboard.

Removing the rack from the housing is simple. Unlock the enclosure, lift up and pull on the handle to remove the drive housing. A point of note here. We were sent two KF-72 racks. One of these showed to not want to allow its drive housing to be removed in the effort free manner we have grown accustomed to. This sticking actually required a goodly amount of force to pull it loose. The second KF-72 unit did not have this problem nor have we seen this with any other Kingwin rack. I'm going to look at this as a fluke but it needs to be pointed out all the same. Once the drive is removed, a small spring tensioned door closes over the opening.