Summatec Computer Corporation

Lynn H Wilson

Douglas R Domel

Timothy J Morrison

Dan C Sheppard

An apparatus for holding a portable hard disk drive in a desk-top personal computer (PC) has a bay that fits into the 3.5' form-factor cavity which is formed in most IBM.sup.R -compatible PCs. The portable hard disk drive is disposed in a protective sleeve. A motor-driven carriage is reciprocably positioned within the bay, and the sleeve is advanced part way into the bay, until the carriage engages the sleeve. Then, the carriage automatically pulls the sleeve the rest of the way into the bay until the disk drive is operably engaged with the computer. When it is desired to eject the sleeve with disk drive, a button is pushed to cause the carriage to push the sleeve out of the bay, perhaps after a short delay time period to allow the disk drive to spin down prior to ejection.

Motorized latch and ejection mechanism for portable hard drive

An apparatus for holding a portable hard disk drive in a desk-top personal computer (PC) has a housing that fits into the 3.5' form-factor cavity which is formed in most IBM.RTM.-compatible PCs. The portable hard disk drive is disposed in a protective sleeve, and the sleeve with disk drive can be manually advanced into the housing to electrically engage the PC with the portable hard disk drive. An ejector mechanism is provided in the housing for manually ejecting the disk drive from the PC upon completion of data transfer between the disk drive and PC. The ejector mechanism includes a latch mechanism movable from a latched configuration, wherein the disk drive is held in electrical contact with the PC, and an unlatched configuration, wherein the disk drive can be ejected from the housing.

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Santa Cruz, CA, United States of America

Lynn H Wilson