Kingwin KF-83 Serial ATA Hard Drive Rack

Manufacturer: Kingwin Inc.
Supplied by: Kingwin Inc.
Price: TBA

By Dean Barker (11/27/2003)

Introduction

Data transportation is big business.  Look at the boom of thumb drives now available if you doubt me.  The one thing a thumb drive can't do is hold more than a gig of data.  For these instances where you need to move large amounts of data and CD-R/DVD-Rs still aren't going to cut it you need at hard drive rack.  A rack will give you the ability to remove a hard drive from you system with a turn of a key and tug on a handle.  You can then take this drive and plug it in another rack (provided they are the same) and bingo, you're in business. 

Another big function of a rack is the ability to have 'more than one computer in the same box.'  What I mean here is that for a long time, my home personal machine doubled as my LAN box.  When it came time to pack up for a party, I simply turned my machine off pulled the day to day hard drive out of the box and stuck in a second hard drive loaded with nothing but games, an entirely different operating system, along with all my tweaks.  So you can see, a hard drive rack is a very practical and functional item. 

Today, we have one of the newest racks from Kingwin on deck, the KF-83.  The KF-83 is basically an aluminum frame with three cooling fans and lots of tricks to keep vibration and noise to a minimum.  Let's begin as usual with the white paper data.

Specifications

• Observed Dimensions: 232 (D) x 146 (W) x 42 (H) mm

• Material Aluminum Alloy / ABS Plastic

• Observed Weight: 799gms

• Cooling: Dual 40mm intake fans, Single 40mm exhaust fan

• Interface: Serial ATA only

• Two position drive key lock

• Single LED (power)

• Available in beige

The last Kingwin rack we looked at was constructed entirely of plastic.  The KF-83 is aluminum with a plastic front bezel.  The aluminum should prove to be more durable in the long run but I've never had a problem with the plastic models myself.  One thing the aluminum model adds unfortunately is weight.  The plastic Kingwin KF-72 rack hit the scales at 448gms where as today's KF-83 comes in at 799gms.  Not a big deal but one worth mentioning.  Let's look at the unit itself.

  

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