This interesting bit of hardware was acquired relatively early into my retro PC journey (see my posts about the modded emachines desktop). As I looked into pcs of the early 2000s to get my initial inspiration, I saw that these cool fan controllers, displays, and other handy things which took up unused 5.25" drive bays were a big part of the case modding scene as it was in its' prime. I became enamored with these accessories and knew I had to have one. After some hunting on ebay, I came up with three different choices: An 'ice storm' HDD air conditioner/temperature display, the Aerogate 3 made by cooler master, and the thermaltake hardcano. After consideration, I chose the hardcano.
The name 'hardcano' comes from a portmanteau of 'hard drive' and 'volcano' - thermaltake offered a series of CPU heatsinks named the 'volcano', and as this 'hardcano' acts as a HDD cooler/vibration dampener, the name sticks.
The Hardcano 11 arrived at my door not in the original packaging, but including the original accessories (6 pieces of double sided tape and a bunch of screws for fastening the drive bay to your pc case), plus the original instructions manual. Operation is quite straightforward.
There are 3 temperature probes - one for the HDD itself and the others can be placed wherever the user desires. Then there is a simple 4-pin molex pass through for powering the unit, two sets of wires to pass HDD activity indication through the unit and back to your PC case, and strangely enough, a male 4 pin molex connector with only 12v and ground wires. In hindsight, this may act as a 'daisy chain' feature to power other thermaltake accessories like fan controllers and the like. I currently have in my possession a 4 channel fan controller whose power connector matches up perfectly to the hardcano's loose connector (Edit: When a fan controller is powered by the hardcano's loose cable it will not function properly. The use of this connector may be for a single fan).
Installation of a drive is completely tool-less. The drive itself rests on top of some silicone bushings (vibration dampers), and a large y-shaped bracket on a hinge swings downwards and rests on top of your harddrive. The points of contact between the bracket and hard drive have fuzzy tape to prevent scratches and further help with vibrations. A single thumbscrew locks everything down tight.
On the inside of the unit, there are two small fans aimed at your hard drive, an empty fan header (allowing you to control fan speed for one case fan via the hardcano) and a dip switch for the master/slave drive toggle.
The molex passthrough is obviously intended for older IDE style drives. This passthrough allows the hardcano and your harddrive to receive power together.
Onto the operation side of things - when powered, the Hardcano 11's LCD screen lights up a pleasant shade of yellow-green, and a multitude of icons can be seen. Starting from the top left, a Hard Drive activity indicator is seen. While normally containing 4 segments to the top piece, the segments will alternate in pairs of two to simulate a spinning motion while your HDD activity light is shining. Next to this is either a 'master' or 'slave' indicator - this is simply to inform the user whether the drive inside is their main or secondary drive, and has to be manually changed using a dip switch located on the circuit board of the unit. To the far right, is a fan activity indicator - it uses the same trick as the HDD motion graphic to show spinning fan blades... its basically just an idiot light letting you know the included fans are working. There is also an illustrative thermometer icon - if the alarm temperature threshold is reached then animated steam will start coming out of the top of the thermometer. Along the bottom is 'set', simply a label for one of the three sliding front panel buttons, the current temperature probe readout, and two arrows above the remaining sliding front panel buttons. These two buttons allow you to increase or decrease the alarm temperature when you are at the alarm threshold edit screen, corresponding to the direction of the arrows.
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| Default operation screen when the unit is powered on. |
When pressing either of the arrow buttons while at the main screen, the HUTR (HDD Usage Time Record) screen will appear, telling the user how how many days and hours the Hardcano 11 has been connected to power for. In theory, this can give the user a record of when to replace the drive... or something like that. It's an interesting feature and gives a decent record. Information will save even if the power supply is switched off.
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| HUTR screen. |
Sliding the front panel reveals a recessed 3-position switch and a fan speed potentiometer. The potentiometer allows you to adjust the speed of the drive-cooling fans as well as your case fan. The 3-position switch allows you to change which temperature probe readout is currently being displayed. You can switch between monitoring your drive or case temps on the fly.
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| Front panel in its' rightmost position. |
If the alarm temperature threshold is reached, additional icons on the screen will show (as previously mentioned), all fans connected to the system will increase to max speed, and a quite loud alarm will sound until it is deactivated.
Of note is that this LCD and accompanying logic board is not unique to this system - icydock used a recolor of the entire unit as a part of their 'bodyguard' series, and the LCD was rehoused in select SATA hot-swap bays made by them (with a blue backlight instead of yellow-green).
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| Original icydock bodyguard. Notice that there are separate potentiometers for each fan connected to the system. |
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| Early 'mobility' hot swap bay design (MB122SKGF-1B). Released around 2005. |
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| Revision (MB672SKGF-B) released in 2008. |
Overall, it's mostly a gimmicky sort of accessory (especially the overheat function, what's the point of maxing out the HDD fans if a case probe elsewhere reads that there's an overheat?), but the display looks quite nice. It also adds a bit of clutter to your case wiring, but when it was sold that was just a given. Wiring management was not nearly as much of a priority then as it is now.
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