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Removable hard drives are devices that operate like a hard drive.

A removable hard drive comes in two parts. The drive and the cartridge.

The drive has an opening where the cartridge is inserted. After you insert the cartridge, it takes a few seconds for the platter to come up to speed. Usually a small light in front of the drive will flash until the drive is up to speed and ready to be used. This process takes a very short time of about 3 seconds.

Cartridges come is various sizes ranging from 40mb up to several gigabytes depending on the models.

They come in both external and internal models.

Internal models

The internal models come in either a 3.5" or a 5-1/4" sizes which fit into a standard floppy drive slot. The interface can be either SCSI or IDE. The SCSI models need a special card that must be installed on the inside of the computer. A cable connects the drive to the SCSI interface card and another cable is provided for power. Some drives come with a SCSI interface card and others do not. SCSI interface cards such as the Adaptec and SIIG work well.

The IDE models are connected on the same cable as the internal hard drive. Since they are standard IDE devices they are configured as either Master or Slave with jumpers which are located on the back of the drive. Since some computers come from the factory with a cable that accommodates only one drive, you might need to obtain a cable that has 2 end connectors instead of one. Typically two IDE devices can be connected to each cable. Many computers also have a secondary IDE interface. If possible you want to try to connect devices on the secondary interface.

External Models

The external models come with their own power supplies and are made to either plug into a SCSI interface card that must be installed on the computer or they connect to the parallel port of the computer.

There are several different models of SCSI card connectors and you must be careful to match the SCSI card to the cable connecting the drive.

The drives also have special software which must be installed to allow the computer to see and use the drives.

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