NORCO SS-500 5-Bay SATA / SAS Hot Swap Rack Module

Pros: Offers LEDs that show power and activity. The fan is not obnoxiously loud, though it would be audible if you have an otherwise very quiet system (I have some three drive trayless SATA cages where the cage fans are louder than entire performance systems).

Easier to get the drives mounted with the slots vertical using the tray based design than it usually is with trayless designs. If the slots are horizontal, I recommend ensuring the bottoms of the drives are down.

Cons: Mine was missing a screw in the faceplate. I was able to easily find a compatible screw (and replaced the three that were there so they all match), but find this a mildly disconcerting oversight. I checked carefully for loose parts or other problems before even applying power.

It came with no screws for attaching it to the chassis. This was quite an interesting challenge as the maximum thread depth (in order to fit the five drives across) is very shallow. I had to use washers with even my shortest available screws to avoid penetrating into where the drives would be mounted.

I would have preferred the latch for the mechanism to be on the 'downward' side if the slots were vertical so that things could not fall on the latch and disconnect drives so easily. The cage was designed to have the latch up in most such arrangements, because of the placement of the mounting holes on the sides. Some cases (many perhaps with slight mods or with an open bay adjacent) might be able to accommodate this orientation, but not the case I have been using (I had no additional bay adjacent and there was no slack in the mounting hole positions).

Other Thoughts: Airflow seems adequate with the stock fan for 5 7200RPM drives under moderate load. I'd strongly suggest a better fan if you run in a warm space or high performance drives under heavy load.

If you have 'support' tabs that help to hold 5.25" half height devices in place while you mount them, you *will* have to bend them out of the way or otherwise remove them before you can fit this. There is not enough room to have gaps to allow those while stacking 5 drives across. If you can not (or do not wish to) do this, you should look at the 4-bay or 3-bay solutions instead, since those can have enough room to leave gaps for these tabs. If your case uses rails, you probably don't need to worry about this.

Pros: This is a robust, simple and perfect bay. Excellent and sturdy exterior!

I have 1TB, 2xTB and 2x3TB, all with great sub 30 deg temps. Fan is awesome, moves enough air.

Cons: I wish the trays are made from a thicker gauge steel. They are bit filmsy and I'm worried that the steel may rub against HDD PCB - which would be disastrous!...

Other Thoughts: I know some packages are missing screws, but i got them, I wish there were some extras... but thats OK. Again these screws are great way to tie down internal hard drives to hot swap trays.

Pros: - Inexpensive
- Decent Build Quality
- 2.5" drive support
- Works as advertised

Cons: I had to mod my case to remove tabs that separate the external 5.25" drive bays.

Other Thoughts: The drives mount vertically. The image on newegg shows the drive cage sideways. Mine came with plenty of screws to mount the drives in their trays, but did not come with any screws to mount the cage itself.

Pros: Solid design, user swappable fan, high quality screws that don't strip.

Cons: The stock fan is loud, I even tried the switch to quiet it down and it still was loud. I suspect it might have been defective because once I swapped it with another new fan it's very quiet.

Pros: convenient

Cons: I dropped one egg because in my mid tower case this sticks out about 1/2" because the depth with the fan makes it slide back over the motherboard. Keep in mind that you need a slightly deeper case, or a motherboard that isn't the full 9.6" deep.

Other Thoughts: I'm using this in a server in my basement so the 1/2" protrusion doesn't bother me, but it would if this was somewhere visible.

Pros: Very well made. Housing is a thick-wall aluminium alloy casting, fan is silent (see cons)

Power and activity lights are exactly the right size, brightness.

Cons: The special screws to attach the drives to the sleds/trays were missing. They are *NOT* substitutable, which was a bad engineering decision. I bought some laptop screws ($0.15 ea, qty 100) that can be modified to fit, but that's a PITA.

The fan is too close to the backplane such that when a drive is inserted into the center slot, it deforms the backplane and causes the fan blades to hit the capacitors. That makes a dreadful racket and does the capacitors no good either. I shimmed out the fan housing ~2mm using index-card stock, which silenced the fan (and it really is silent).

The SATA ports are very close together (probably out of necessity), so that to disconnect any cable but the leftmost one requires using something like a table knife to depress the latch --fingers, even small fingers, won't fit.

Other Thoughts: I intend to RMA the unit, and mailed Norco asking whether the problems were due to my having been sent an early model.

I took off 3 eggs because the problems --non-substitutable screws, fan blades hitting things-- are so obvious that they should have been caught long before the product went to manufacturing.

Pros: I found the jumpers third time around, (old eyes and tired mind, I guess), so I'll bump this to three eggs to average out at 2. I agree with yomanwill: dip switches would be better. Easier to see, too.

The default jumpers are fan on full, and fan-failure alarm on.

I found a third drive-mounting screw, so at least I can now test the unit even though I can't actually use it.

(Found the support email address in another review as well as a reference to extra trays. Same eyes/mind apologia)

Cons: The choice of those drive-mounting screws was a real show-stopper.

Pros: Looks nicely designed and well-made. High-quality.

Cons: Per the other reviews and the box itself, this unit should have come with special mounting screws for the drives, and jumper blocks for fan speed and alarm on/off.

It didn't. Which makes it nothing but an expensive paperweight since the screws (6-32 flatheads with about 3/16 threaded) aren't available even at the exceptionally well-stocked local hardware store (an entire aisle devoted to fasteners).

I took the whole thing apart thinking that perhaps the jumpers and the screws were hiding somewhere. If they are, they're safe from me! It's basically 3 pcs: the sheet metal, the backplane (fsvo backplane), and the moulded-plastic housing for the fan & connectors.

It's bad engineering to specify hard-to-find fasteners that cannot be substituted and that are necessary for the product to work. It might have added fifty cents to the unit cost to make those screws substitutable, but it would have been money well-spent.

I'm feeling quite annoyed right now.

Other Thoughts: How do I get the screws?

Where are the jumpers?

Do I have to RMA this box?

Presuming I can get this box working, can I buy additional trays for it? Norco doesn't seem to have an email address for such enquiries.

Pros: Pros:
Very sturdy extruded aluminum housing
LED's are not overly bright
Overall good fit and finish, impressed
It was able to fit my locking SATA cables

I was looking at 3 different units the Athena, Supermicro, and this one. I choose this because it was a little cheaper than the highly rated Supermicro unit, but seemed nicer than the Athena. Overall, I have not been let down.

Cons: Fan is loud. For a server environment it is perfect: ball bearing so it will last and moves lots of air. So, I can't fault them. For my particular application I replaced it with a quieter fan. Antec 3-speed fan from BB, did this on the weekend had little choice about vender.

When you remove the fan shroud there are jumpers. I tried setting J1 to full/half fan speed but was not able to get the fan to change speeds. Doesn't matter because I replaced the fan anyway, but I'm upset that I could not get this to work (may have been a user error).

Now I'm getting picky: I would have preferred dip switches instead of jumpers.

At this price I expected a few extra HDD screws, may some extra to attach the unit to my case, but they give exactly enough.

Instructions printed on box. The box will not be saved and I guarantee in about 3 months I will not remember what jumpers J1, J2, or J3 do. Either mark the circuit board accordingly or have a small printed sheet that can be referenced.

No SATA cables, that's OK I have too many to count.

Other Thoughts: Overall, the Cons that were listed are very minor in relation to the Pros. The quality of this unit is great and I would buy again.

For reference:
Jumper 1 1-2 Full Fan Speed
Jumper 1 2-3 Half Fan Speed
Jumper 2 1-2 Enable Alarm
Jumper 2 2-3 Disable Alarm
Jumper 3 ?? No clue I saw it, instructions did not mention what it did

Pros: Heavy duty steel construction. Trays slide smoothly. Only one power connection required for 5 drives.

Cons: Noisy Fan. But easly replaced. No screws included for mounting unit to case. Very tight fit into tower case.

Other Thoughts: Used in a Unraid server, drives never go over 40c during 17 hour parity sync. So air flow is good. Stock fan is noisy and was replaced with quiet Coollink fan. Setup is qhisper quiet now. Fan is secured with four screws and simple to replace.

Only con is no mounting screw incluced to mount unit to case. Most geeks have screws laying, but they should be included. Screws are supplied for mounting drive into trays. Units fits very tight into case, not to hard to get in, but would be a bear to take out.