StarTech SATABAY425BK 4 Drive 2.5in Hot Swap SAS SATA Mobile Rack Backplane

Pros: It looks cool and works.

Cons: Received it with a broken bay, called startech to see if could just replace the bay and not the entire thing and they gave me the runaround, even though another review on here said they would do this (prob a startech employee).

Also found that the fans had alot of emi, which was causing my drives to lose 10-20MB/s. But not a big deal, they're easy to remove.

Other Thoughts: Companies should wise up before being jerks to their customers, it just costs them more in the end.

Pros: Works fine for my Intel X25-M SSD
Key for locking
Appears to be good quality and sturdy.

Cons: Fans are small (I didn't even need fans) so they're loud but you can't exactly fit large fans on such a small enclosure.
Changing the jumper for fan speed is difficult because it is very recessed into the enclosure.
This thing is way expensive for what it is but it doesn't appear that there is much competition in the market so they can charge what ever they want.

Pros: Good product but could be improved.

Cons: The only con about this unit is the plastic latches, other then that its a great unit. I got 2 and out of the 2 I own I only had trouble with 1 tray.I can see where the tray can be a problem if you don't handel with some (Delicute care)

Other Thoughts: I call StarTech spoke with a gentlemen named Jason.Told him about the broken latch he shipped me a new tray the same day.Now thats customer service.Thanks again Jason

Pros: Solid exterior.

Cons: Will power up my velociraptor but interface doesn't recognize the drive.

I have four of these bays in total. The first three were eight port designs for use with SATA *and* SAS. All my 2.5" SATA drives work flawlessly with the first three.

Then Startech decides to cut corners and produce a cheaper variant with four ports. This is the fourth unit I purchased. None of these ports will power up my velociraptor despite the three other Startech bays working flawlessly.

Following the complaints about SAS incompatibility and my experiences with SATA drives, I'd avoid this redesigned turkey at all costs.

Other Thoughts: This is the FIRST 1 egg product review I've written. Wish these companies would think twice about changing a perfectly good product, cheapening it, and in the process destroying everything that makes it work so well.

Again, I *love* the first three Startech bays I have. Hate, hate, hate this redesigned cheaper variant.

Pros: Great space saver, and perfect for those who want to convert to quieter, less power hunger 2.5" disks. Quality drive holder once I got a working model (see cons)

Cons: as other reviews already mentioned the second version, and complete undocumented change of this, has 4 black sata ports and no yellow, and it also doesn't work with enterprise drives (including SAS, and the veloci-raptors)

Other Thoughts: StarTech support was really helpful, and issued me a replacement model (effective version 3 I guess) that worked great, I'm very happy after that. StarTech support was friendly and quick to troubleshot the issue and roll out a new version. (I pretty sure I was among the first customers that reported the problem, when I first called in the issue wasn't acknowledged yet, but with in a week they did, and with in about 3-4 weeks of that, they were able issue me a new model.)
I removed one egg b/c of the hassle, but I had no trouble working with StarTech support, I will definitely buy another when I can afford some more veloci-raptors. =)

Pros: This is a beautifully made sata bay. Solid and well designed physically and works well with SATA drives only.

Cons: This bay is advertised to work with SAS drives. It does not. Three is a design flaw pointed out to me by StarTech support. I prevents your interface from recognizing SAS drives.

Other Thoughts: I've lost a lot of time getting this box, and then having my new Seagate Savvio drives not recognized. We thought it was the SAS interface, or the cables or the drives themselves. Found out after much aggravation that it was this box which was redesigned to make manufacture cheaper...but they messed up and it no longer works with SAS. They did NOT change their advertising though.

Pros: Neat design for holding up to four 2.5" SATA drives in a single 5-1/4" drive bay. Single molex power for all four drives.

Cons: Caution- this is a SATA backplane only! Would not power up my four HP 146GB SAS drives. Mine came with only single SATA/drive connection (4 total) on the backplane, NOT 8 as shown in pics. Will not work with two port drives. With only 4 drive connections I don't see how this would work at all with SAS drives.

Pros: Nice Advertising, 4x SAS/SATA 2.5 in one cd bay. nice hotswap capability if it would have worked. which brings me to the cons.

Cons: In all of my reviews I have never given a flat 1 egg to a product, so this is pretty bad. First off it would (and will) not power on any SAS hard drive I put into it. Tested 3 in it. (Even though the little LED indicator light on the front goes on, but further review into the LED's shows that they go on no matter if you hold the fastener clamps down on the hookup inside the enclosure.) sounds like they skipped making a "Real" LED power indicator. I mean what if a drive died???? would you not know!? terrible. back to no power. My Enterprise SAS drives have their very own LED indicators on the chipset on the opposite end of the connectors, whenever I plug in a standard 29 pin sas cable to them the LED comes on.....of course when I put the drives in to the enclosure. no LED. If I could give it 0 Eggs I would. that's my frustration with an already overpriced piece of alluminum.
Flimsy LED tunnels
Flimsy Trays
and it does not even do its function which is to power on a connect drives.

Other Thoughts: Also my enclosure only shipped with 4 data ports all black in color instead of 8, although that doesnt matter since the drives never even made it to powering on, but I am sure if they did power on that would have been the second hoop to jump through.


I was really hoping this would solve my space issues, but this is the first and last piece of hard ware I will ever purchase from this company .

Pros: I bought this for a 1U server. It went in easily, even though this was my first attempt at adding anything like this to my system. I have 2 x 250 HD's and 2 x 60 HD's, all SATA 150 refurbs. Everything is running under VMware nicely. Definitely an easy way to add a lot of space to a cramped system.

Cons: The plugins for SAS/SATA are not labeled and do not follow the schematic included with the backplane, as others have noted. Of course I plugged into the wrong connection my first try.

Other Thoughts: If you have four sata ports open and want to add an easy way to add 4 drives, you could do a lot worse than this. I would recommend to anyone. If you have put any kind of drive into a system before this should be a piece of cake.

Pros: Great unit rugged main frame works and looks great in my HTPC and a gaming rig I built.I bought 2 of them.

Cons: The only con for me is the fans.Even on the low setting they are a bit too loud for me so I removed the jumper and don't use the fans at all.

Other Thoughts: I use this in a RAID-0 setup with 2 Western Digital VelociRaptor 150gig in RAID-0(only) I removed them from there 3.5 main dock and 2 Western Digital 160gig Noteboook drives(Downloads/Storage) so 4 drives in all total and none of them get hot at all barely warm and thats without the fans on<<Game Rig. HTPC 2 Seagate 80gigs setup in RAID-0 and 1 500gig for movies/MP3's and a 80gig for downloads In a LIAN LI PC-V800B Black Aluminum ATX Desktop Computer Case.Way more quiet and cooler then regular 3.5 HDD's