Motorized latch and ejection mechanism for portable hard drive

摘要

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 IBMR-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.