Patent ID: 7375959

Claim:
An external drive cabinet comprising: a cabinet frame partially enclosed with an opening on top and a rectangular enclosure in the center of the cabinet frame, and a power connector and a data interface connector installed side by side on the back side of the cabinet frame; a tray made with plastic to hold a hard disk, the tray having two side walls, a back wall and a bottom, wherein the tray has a horizontal tie plate over a middle section to connect the two side walls, and a handle bar across the front end of the tray to form a mouth opening; and movement of the tray is controlled by a hinged joint at the back end of the tray; and a shutter plate which is used to cover the tray from outside environment; wherein the back wall of the tray has an opening for receiving the power connector and another opening for receiving the data interface connector which is positioned slightly in front of the power connector, and the data interface connector is connected by a flexible flat cable to a circuit board embedded in the bottom of the cabinet frame so that the data interface connector is allowed to move with certain flexibility when a data interface socket of the hard disk is coupled with the data interface connector.