I am a Computer Hardware professional. I started working with computer technology in the early eighties. I have seen the evolution of technology starting with closed platforms like the game console era and then the move toward open platforms like the Home Computer Golden Age. In the last 5 or 10 years, I have witnessed technology changes that are slowly moving away from open hardware designs towards hardware that is locked down and can’t be modified by the user.
Yeah, but that would go in the back of the PC. Mine is sticking out of a port that’s meant to be used as the CD Rom tray. Mine has 2 of them, and the second one has always been abandoned. So now I pull the flap down, and I can stick it in.
Also, there’s no cables. You just insert the drive into the enclosure, and close the enclosure door until it clicks. All the wires are connected to the enclosure, not the drive.
I’m kind a excited about these NVMe PCI bays. I have a short-depth wall-mount rack in a closet for my networking gear, and I found I like having a “front IO” server chassis in it:
However, I’ve never been able to find a chassis (even a 3U or 4U one) that had both front IO and external drive bays for hot-swap. But now we’re at the point where I can finally achieve what I want by using the card slots for the drives!
(Now I just need to be able to afford the cost.)