Installation

The installation of the Spire GigaPod III doesn't require any experience and is quite easy and user friendly process. First of all we need of course a suitable hard disk, and since the GigaPod III comes with a normal ATA interface we need to match it accordingly. Next to that it has to be a 3.5" drive. So, we picked up a Maxtor 120GB Ultra ATA/133 (DiamondMax Plus 9) harddrive which will be used for carrying out the installation procedure and the testing of the unit.

Let's just put it all together... We have a harddrive, the GigaPod III SP110-NEB housing, some screws and also two rail brackets. That's it, we are set to go an install the hard drive to become a mobile storage device. First of all we check the settings of the hard drive. What should it be? We can set it to be master, slave or cable select. Well for an external storage solution that doesn't matter, so we take the easy way and leave the drive on cable select.

Before going further we first need to apply the rail brackets to the hard drive. These rail guides are screw less and therefore just need to be put on the side of the hard drive in question. On each side we applied one of the brackets by lining up the screw holes on the hard drive with the notches on the guides. One bracket will fit the right and on the left side. Decent, fast and effective!

Opening up the GigaPod III is done by removing the backplate featuring the external connections and power button. Out of the box the back plate isn't screwed to the aluminum housing, so that it can be taken off quite easily. Once the back plate is removed we have free way to insert the hard drive. Before doing so, we are connecting the back plate connections to the Maxtor hard drive.

And then we can just slide the Maxtor hard drive safely in the Spire aluminum housing and fit the back plate on it to close it off. To wrap it all up we just use the two screws that came with GigaPod III the package and screw on the back plate. That's it, all set to go and play with our new toy. We just need to attach the power supply and the USB cable...