FirmTek With 2.5-Inch Trayless HDD/SSD Enclosure

FirmTek, LLC, developer of SATA solutions for Apple Macintosh and PC systems, announces the miniSwap/ES.

For SSD and 2.5" SATA) hard drives, the miniSwap/ES enclosure provides trayless, hot-swap, 2.5" dual-bay, external enclosure support for Mac and PC computers.

The trayless, dual-bay miniSwap/ES was created to provide 2.5" storage devices with fast SATA 6G bandwidth, simple disk mounting, quiet operation and user selectable digital power modes that support auto-on or manual power-on in the case of a power disconnect.

The small yet rugged miniSwap/ES can be integrated as a portable on-the-go 2.5" dual-bay enclosure, or as a space saving, high performance, trayless 2.5" desktop drive mounting station. Multiple miniSwap/ES enclosures can be cascaded to provide RAID performance, expanded capacity and simple or complex storage configurations.

The miniSwap/ES incorporates a backplane design with no internal cabling which helps to reduce electromagnetic interference (EMI) and improve convective cooling. It supports 2.5" SATA hard drives and SSD. The trayless bay design supports standard 2.5-inch 9.5mm height devices along with 7mm, 12.5mm and larger disks up to 14.9mm.

Do Away with the Tray
The miniSwap/ES silver aluminum chassis features a design made from extruded aluminum to keep weight at a minimum while maintaining firm structural rigidity.

"Loading a 2.5-inch hard disk or SSD is as easy as inserting a bare drive into the miniSwap/ES and closing the bay door. That’s it! No tray, no screws and no tools required," said Chi Kim Stanford, Vice President of Business Development.

The construction allows each 2.5" drive to connect with the FirmTek direct-connect backplane and communicate with the computer. Each miniSwap/ES bay is tied to the computer with its own dedicated eSATA data cable. This connection method maximizes performance while providing SATA controller compatibility.

Instant Data Access
The miniSwap/ES is compatible with virtually every external SATA host adapter and built-in SATA port. In addition, It  can support bandwidth of up to 600MBytes/sec or 6.0Gbits/sec per drive. The trayless, direct-connect miniSwap/ES enclosure is designed for audio/video editing, computer animation, digital photography, portable computing, storage expansion, backup and any application where external, flexible trayless, hot-swap, high performance, data storage is desirable.
miniSwap/ES

Features and Benefits

• Durable, portable trayless enclosure supports dual 2.5-inch SATA SSD or HDD
• Easy to set up: No screws, no drive tray required: swap drives in seconds
• Easy to operate: Open the door to insert or remove storage devices for virtually unlimited storage
• Supports 7mm, 9.5mm, 12.5mm and 14.9mm drive heights
• Smart Power Management: User selectable power settings for Auto-on or Manual Power-on
• High performance design – Integrated direct-connect eSATA backplane; no internal cabling
• High bandwidth design – SATA 6.0Gbps up to 600MB/sec per drive
• Supports SATA 1.5G, 3G or 6G HDD or SSD 2.5-inch form factor with any capacity
• RAID capable: Compatible with operating system and host adapter based RAID solutions
• Can be configured as JBOD or RAID and used with multiple miniSwap/ES enclosures
• Power and activity LEDs for each hard drive
• Aluminum case for durability and heat dissipation
• Quiet, fan free, aluminum heat dissipation cooling system
• Performance can handle multiple projects simultaneously
• For both storage-hungry and speed-sensitive applications
• Cross-platform, PC and Macintosh compatible: Operating system independent
• Expand storage without overloading the computer’s power supply or increasing heat within its chassis
• Works with Macintosh or PC with shielded Serial ATA ports running Mac OS X, Windows or Linux
• Kensington security slot

The FirmTek miniSwap/ES is available from FirmTek authorized resellers (Part# MS-ES). The standard model found at FirmTek resellers includes two SATA hard disks. Specially priced build-to-order miniSwap/ES bundles with custom pre-installed SATA hard disks or SSD configurations are available at the FirmTek Store.