SNT SNT-SAS425 4 x 2.5" HDD in 1 x 5.25" bay SAS/SATA 2.5" Hot Swap Backplane RAID cage Daisy Chain Ready

Pros: Incredibly sturdy, solid metal, well-engineered and completely likeable. After upgrading my laptops and ending up with 3 500 GB 2.5" drives, and one 250 GB 2.5" drive, this seemed like a perfect way to get some continued use from these drives. Works like a champ, but I'm thinking about buying a SATA RAID controller to turn them into an array.

Cons: The documentation shipped with the unit is a single piece of 5.5 x 8.5" paper, printed on both sides. I had to figure out by trial and error that the yellow SATA connectors (labeled "Secondary") were the right ones to use for attaching individual SATA drives, rather than the grey ones (labeled "Primary" about which the doc sheet says "SATA HDDs...are supported by Primary ports only). The numbering on the diagram was correct, but the case labels were wrong. Go figure!

Other Thoughts: I was amazed at the value, fit, and finish of this $55 computer part. The two 40 mm fans are a little bit noisy, but disk temps (as reported in CrystalDiskInfo) ran under 30 degrees C even at heavy load (not bad for a notebook drive). A great product at a great price!

Pros: Holds 13mm drives but you have to remove the cover. Fans not overly noisy ,construction is solid, No stupid keys, just a lock button and lever. Drives seat firmly in the slots.

Cons: A little tight in a CDROM hole, these are obviously manufactured to a pretty narrow tolerance, so you can cram 4 2.5's in a space 5.25 wide. You may have issues with a poorly contructed case.

Other Thoughts: Wish I could get a case to hold two of these side-by-side in a low profile configuration with a mini-itx motherboard. Would let me make a killer little 8 drive low profile NAS/SAN. . . I keep looking!

Pros: Well manufactured--solid construction;
fans are quiet;
great heat dissipation (average temp of my 14 Seagate Momentus 750GB drives is 24C at full-on write (room temperature 18C))
fits 15mm drives by removing the top of the sled--brilliant idea;
sleds are smooth to slide in/out.

Cons: The power LEDs are super bright.

Other Thoughts: I bought 4 of them for a 14-drive RAID. If I were to build another server, I would not hesitate to buy this product again.

A 'would have been nice' feature would be either a) the HDD LED switch turns off the super-bright power LEDs, or b) a second LED to turn them off--leaving the access LEDs on. It wasn't a deal breaker for me, as I'm handy with a soldering iron and quickly unsoldered the blue lead.

Pros: Nice little raid cage, does what it's supposed to. Has fans to keep your precious drives cool so they last more than a few months; so many complaints "my drives combustibly exploded". Gee Mcguyver, did ya cool em? Seriously though; it isn't enterprise quality but who'd need that for a desktop?

Cons: Only issue with these is if you're doing a dual, triple or quad SSD array you end up in a situation whereas the available bandwidth from the drives exceeds the available per-channel core logic bandwidth of the SATA controller on the mobo. In short, you need SATA two connectors per drive, one needs to be unplugged. If your mobo is not happy;' thankfully my nforce5 is rock solid at pegged load but if your mobo isn't you're looking at a $300 SATA Raid card. I get nearly 300MBPS Random read/write. Bubba is happy, his VM's run quick and he is no longer bottlenecked.

Seems like in 6 months the cage will be completely jam-packed with dust and if a fan goes two of the drives won't be cooled. I solve one with a vaccuum cleaner the other with a screw driver. I'm putting 3W SSD's in these, so call me the master of overkill.

Other Thoughts: Purple Monkey Dishwasher.

Pros: This is a very sturdy and well made tray system.
Has room for 12.5mm drives (or 4x 1TB drives in a 5.25" bay as of this writing).

Cons: Does not let you daisy chain SATA disks.

I think the blue LEDs are excessively bright.

Other Thoughts: I had this connected through my SAS controller, but did not have any SAS hard drives on hand to test the daisy chain with to see if you could daisy chain a SATA drive after a SAS one.

Pros: Heavy little bugger, solid for the price. Metal cage rails, didn't have any issues sliding the loaded cages in.
Happily a switch to turn off the Leds, cudos to whomever got the clue bat for this one.
General plus, no missing accessories.

Cons: The plastic lock clips on the drive cage. If you don't hot swap or exchange drives out much this shouldn't be an issue. So far so good haven't broken. (knock on wood...)
Noisy fans, no high/low/off mode.

Other Thoughts: If your willing to pop it open you can rig the fans to a controller, and all is well.

Pros: Solid Metal Consruction - Very sturdy.
Fans are relatively quiet (I have mine disabled anyway because I like silent)
Even without the fans, it keeps 2.5 inch scorpio blacks cool.
Easy to install
Looks pretty good!

Cons: I find the LEDs a little bright.

Other Thoughts: First 2.5 backplane bay device I've owned, and it works great.

Pros: Super sturdy construction. I just wanted to hold it and play with it. Solid Brushed Aluminum finish, which is surprising, because once it goes in, you never see the solid brushed aluminum finish again....

Sleds are of sturdy metal construction.

Cons: Any standard mounting screw used to mount the Cage in the tower will ultimately stick into the Cage preventing easy sliding of the Drive sleds. I had to back the screws out half way just to be able to slide the sleds.

Other Thoughts: I used the larger screws that came with the kit to secure it to my case (Thermaltake Armor 8000 series). The smaller screws are used to mount the Drives to the sleds.

Pros: - Finally, a backplane for 2.5" drives in a standard enclosure.
- Sturdy construction found usually on the servers only.
- Good fitting sleds (?).
- Separate LEDs for power and HDD activity (for each drive) is very useful!
- Comes with built-in fans.

Cons: Non-standard screws: The screw pitches are standard, but the flat(ter) head
and the depth are not. Make sure you use these carefully and don't lose them.
Weight: Seriously, such a small thing doesn't need to be this heavy. Don't get
me wrong, the construction is quite sturdy as it should be, but this is too heavy.
The NSK1380 I used ths in is also quite heavy for its size.
Fans: The fans were kind-of quiet, but I disabled them anyway.
Depth: This is totally speculative, but they could have probably made them
even quieter.

Other Thoughts: If anyone from the manufacturer is reading this:
1) Make it a bit lighter in weight,
2) Use quieter fans. Or just use snap-in kind that can be replaced.
I combined them with an Antec NSK1380 for a really small server (well, Mini-ITX would probably also do this, but I wanted Micro-ATX for
price/performance).

I would most definitely buy again.

Pros: - Aluminum construct
- Black stylish finish
- Convenient, mounting the disk only takes a few seconds and 4 screws
- Fit nicely, and the trade were sliding in and out fairly easily
- The fans were pretty quiet actually
- Came with 4 SATA cables, which is nice

Cons: - The plastic locking switch/tab do look a little fragile, i was afraid i would break it if i am not careful
- They labeled the connector at the back incorrectly, the SAS plug was actually the SATA plug, and vice versa

Other Thoughts: I had a SSD dangling in my case since i had no place to mount it, and i also accidentally bought a 2.5" SATA drive for my laptop (needed IDE) so that was also collecting dust... This is perfect for my need, i can mount them nicely in my case, and it matched perfectly too since my case is also black!