1. I would like use an External Enclosure as a removable external hard drive system to add and remove hard drives from the enclosure without having to unscrew the drive from the bottom tray. Is this possible, and what components would I need?

ANS. Yes, this is possible using either the Snap-In SATA Mobile Rack or the Mobile Rack II with the AE5SACSU2 or the AE5SACSUF External Enclosure.

Snap-In SATA Mobile Rack		Mobile Rack II

2. How do I set the jumper on the SATA - IDE Converter Board to Master or Slave setting?

ANS. The opposite end of the Master and Slave jumper has the Master or Slave setting printed.

External Drive enclosure SATA/IDE to USB/Firewire FAQ
Model: AE5SACSUF

1. What is the size limitation to Partition and Format a SATA hard drive in the AE5SACSUF?

ANS. There is no limitation with USB connection. With Firewire connection, the maximum partition size is limited to 127GB with the NTFS or HFS+ file systems due to the Oxford 911 chipset. If you have a drive larger than 127GB you will need to create more than one partition to use the enclosure effectively. There is no size limitation for the FAT32 file system. An IDE hard drive of any capacity can also be used regardless of file size.

2. Can I partition and format the drive using FAT32?

ANS. Yes, you can. A FAT32 partition larger than 127GB can be formatted without any problem via USB or Firewire connection. However, the Disk Management utility in Windows XP and 2000 are unable to create and format an FAT32 partition larger than 32GB. Formatting a drive with the FAT32 file system can be done using the Windows 98 operating system, or a third party utility such as Partition Magic or fat32format. Fat32format is an open source win32 application designed to create FAT32 partitions of any capacity up to the 2TB partition limit of FAT32.

4. Do you have any plans on fixing the limitation of the enclosure to support drives larger than 127GB to create a full partition in NTFS?

ANS. At this time, there is a limitation on the Firewire chipset that we use on the enclosure. For a hard drive enclosure supporting partitions larger than 127GB through the Firewire connection using the NTFS or HFS+ file system, we have the Saturn ExDrive Kit. The Saturn ExDrive Kit enclosure can also be connected to your computer through the USB connection, as well as eSATA or Cardbus, when used with the appropriate cables (sold separately).

4. What types of optical drives are supported by the AE5SACSUF?

ANS. Only IDE optical drives are compatible with the AE5SACSUF, by removing the IDE-SATA converter board and connecting the optical drive directly to the IDE ribbon cable coming from the enclosure. SATA optical drives are not supported with this enclosure.