Pros: None, zip, nada, zilch

Cons: Cheap construction. Despite the SFF-8087, this is not a true back plane RAID cage. StarTech support is non-existent, and not worth the effort to try to contact them as they will hang up on you as soon as you ask a technical question.

Other Thoughts: If you want a real 2.5" SAS (SFF-8087) backplane, step up and get a SUPERMICRO CSE-M28SAB .

They might be more expensive that many would think of spending, but don't cry if you skimp the quality and keep getting cheap junk like this.

Pros: idk

Cons: i called twice and waited for over 2 hours. the guy on the phone was named jason and every time i began to inquire about if this product with my areca raid card he hung up. i was reading the guys post below and using his cons as base knowledge and asking questions about his experience. idk i guess im not getting this.

Pros: It has a mini-SAS connector on the back, so less cable clutter.

Cons: The little disk trays are nothing more than flat piece of aluminium with a plastic lock on the end. NO FREAKING GUIDE RAILS for the tray. The trays rattle inside freely.
If you dare put a drive in it, the only thing that prevents the tray from rattling is the SAS/SATA connector. It's the tray that's supposed to hold the connector in place, not the other way around.

The tray closing mechanism is made out of cheap plastic.
No matter how careful you are, the risk of breaking it is high. The " locking mechanism that prevents unauthorized" would make you think it's a round key, like what we see on many cases. No, it's just an allen screw, and the key is an allen wrench. I can open that mechanism with my fingernail.

It's advertised as having "power and activity LEDs". It has a very nice blue power LED, but no activity LED.

Startech also advertises this as a "SAS backplane". A SAS backplane means it has a little chip that communicates with the SAS controller. The little chip is what turns on the two LEDs (to indicate drive selected, activity, drive fault, etc.). Not on this product. This is a simple, runt-of-the mill enclosure, not a backplane. Don't be fooled by the SAS connector.

A normal backplane has a polymer capacitor per voltage line for each drive. This is to prevent brown-outs when plugging in drives from disabling drives that are already working. This product has two low-quality, old-fashioned electrolytic capacitors. They are not capable of handling the transients that come from plugging in a drive. I put a drive in, powered it on. When I plugged in a second drive, I heard the first one powering down. Try doing that when you want to recover a degraded array; your whole array is now failed. This product is NOT EVEN HOT-SWAP. You can't hot swap without killing your other drives.

Did I mention it didn't work? My SAS controller couldn't detect any drives attached to this cold-swap enclosure. I opened it up out of curiosity. The signal lines on the circuit board board are not impedance-matched (Impedance matching is a very big deal in high-speed signals). This means that signals arrive at slightly different times and become desynchronized; the drive won't ever be detected.

Other Thoughts: I work with server hardware a lot, and I know too well how a backplane should behave. I have an HP SAS backplane with me right now, for comparison. I can take a drive out, and put a new one in, in about three seconds.

With the Startech enclosure, I have to be careful when pulling the drive out, so as not to break the plastic handle. I have to be careful inserting the new drive to make sure it goes in right. I have to be careful when pushing the drive in, to make sure I don't break the SATA/SAS connector. Finally, I have to be extra careful when closing the plastic latch, to make sure I don't break the two small plastic pins holding the tray to the enclosure.

The fan is louder than any of my 1U servers at full load. We've already established this enclosure is no good in a server environment. It's just as useless in a desktop or workstation

I love seeing a huge variety of products and a gigantic selection. However, in the case of this product, NewEgg would be doing its customers a huge favor by not selling such an abomination.

It promises server-features, it has the price of a server-oriented product, but it is nothing more than a non-working piece of aluminium. there's nothing to see here, move along.

Pros: SAS Connector to keep cables tidy, High Density 4x 2.5 in 5.25 slot. Nice little fan to keep things cool.

Cons: Drive Trays / "Doors" don't actually close "drive bays", instead allow for a 8mm gap. If this is for airflow I'm not sure but it is asking for a major dust bunny breeding farm. Two screws holding the connector board in the back on the power connector side came out within 5 minutes making plugging the power in impossible.

Other Thoughts: Great Idea on paper, Only 4x 2.5 -> 5.25 I've found with a true SAS port, but engineering and manufacturing quirks were a killer. RMAing this one.