[any] Hard Drive won't insert into [any] Hot Swap drive bay (FIX - Picture Guide)

WARNING: Always "ground" yourself before using sensitive electronic devices! i.e. Touch a radiator or use an anti-static wrist band connected to your PC case.

Introduction

This is a picture guide on how to fix an issue if you have issues with a hard drive getting stuck or not being able to be inserted into a hot swap drive bay:

The Problem / Issue ...

In this example I am trying to insert a HGST Deskstar 8TB NAS hard drive into my Orico Hot Swap Drive Bay (model 1106SS). However, I've had similar issues with Western Digital Gold Enterprise hard drives as well.

The problem is the hot swap drive bay's roller mechanism gets stuck in a hole at the rear of the hard drive; illustrated below:

The hole in the hard drive:

Evidence to support the claim above:

Solution:

To fix this is relatively simple. You only need a bit of sturdy tape. I HIGHLY recommend using Electrical tape, sometimes known as insulating tape. It is cheap to buy and available at any DIY store. Mine cost me £2.99 from my local store. You don't have to use black as they normally come in a selection of colours to chose from.

1. Work out where you need to place the tape on the hard drive. To do this, analyse where the roller mechanism is catching the rear of the hard drive. Just as I did above.
   
   
2. Apply tape, making sure not to cover the PCB (the green board).
   Try not to touch the SATA and Power connectors on the drive as you could get moist or dust on them which is not recommended.
   
   
3. Make sure to apply two layers of tape for extra strength. This is so that the roller will not cause the tape to sink into the hole when inserting the drive. Look closely at how I applied the tape. Looking from the rear of the drive, with the PCB side facing up; I applied two pieces of tape, vertically, parallel to each other. Then I applied a horizontal piece of tape on top of these two pieces; a total of two layers.
   

Testing

The test proves to be a success and the hard drive now inserts without issue:

Hard drive fully inserted:

Final Notes

You may need to replace the tape if you heavily swap your hard drives. For me it will take time for the tape to wear down as I only use mine for backups.

I highly recommend being gentle when inserting the hard drives into any hot swap drive bay so that the tape can withstand the pressure applied by the roller mechanism.

The end ...

No Safely Remove Hardware or Eject options (missing)?

I hope this guide was useful to you. If you have issues with getting the hard drive to appear in the "safely remove" icon in your taskbar, see my solution to that in this blog post. 

ANY Hot Swap Drive Bay / Caddy, no Safely Remove Hardware or Eject options (missing) FIX!

Hi all,

I recently installed an Orico 5.25" Hot Swap drive bay for 3.5 inch hard drives (Orico 1106SS).


Issue:

Once I loaded a 3.5" hard drive into the bay and powered it on, my Windows detected it fine and I was able to initialise it and use it without issues.

However, there was no option to "Safely Remove Hardware" option in the system tray. Nor was there an "Eject" option when right clicking the hard drive in "My Computer".

After many hours of checking that: (a) the "Plug n Play" service was working, (b) re-installing Intel's Rapid Storage Technology (RST) driver and (c) checking my BIOS settings; I finally found a solution which works just as good, if not better!


FIX:

Download and install the software, HotSwap! by Kazuyuki Nakayama.

"It does the same thing as you can remove device from Device Manager but it provides much friendly user interface as you remove the removable device from the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the notification area. It also ensures that all data are written and flushed to the disk before the device to be hot-swapped, so you can use SATA/eSATA drive as a removable device much alike USB/IEEE1394 drive."

LINK = http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm


IMPORTANT NOTES:

Please visit the above link to learn how to use the software!

If you are using Windows 2000, use version 2.0.0.0.

If you are using Windows XP or Server 2003, use version 5.0.0.0.

How to remove (hide) system reserved drive in my computer ...

Few days ago I was helping out a friend install Windows 7. He had the system reserve partition that Windows 7 creates appear in his 'My Computer'. He asked me how to remove it (get rid of it). I said to him it wasn't a good idea to get rid of it as it was there to help boot up Windows 7 just in case of failure. I decided to research it and it turned out you can simply hide it. To hide the system reserve drive from appearing in 'My Computer' do the following:

1) Open Control Panel

2) Open Administrative Tools found in the System and Security Category

3) Open Computer Management

4) Click on Disk Management

5) Right click on the system reserve disk drive and select 'Change Drive letter and Paths ...'

6) Select the drive letter and click on remove

7) Click OK

8) Check that it has been 'hidden' (removed) from My Computer

9) Recommend you do a restart and save a restore point