ICY DOCK 6 x 2.5 SSD to 5.25 Drive Bay Hot Swap Backplane Cage Mobile Rack Comparable to Tray-less Design - Expresscage MB326SP-B

Pros: Reasonably well built.

Cons: Sas? Well, the connector *looks* compatible, but all the sas drives I have seen are (apparently) thicker than the allowable 12.5mm. That is what I get for eyeballing it. I have a small pile of old server sas drives that I was going to use in two of these, but guess not. Best i can tell, the enterprise server class drives are 15mm.

Overall Review: The drive trays a bit delicate. I dont think this is a problem for me, but some people can be... a bit hard on items and may break these.

Pros: * Lightweight * Durable * Inexpensive * Uses SATA power instead of Molex (4-pin) power * User replaceable fan

Cons: "Manual" is a bit skimpy but I don't think there is much they could do here. At least it isn't 3 pages repeated in 15 languages.

Overall Review: If you want the hot-swap capability make sure the system supports and it is enabled otherwise the system won't see new drives on demand. It does appear to have protections in place to prevent any issues when hot-swap isn't on or available but then the system won't see the drive until reboot. Included are 2 different length screws. Make sure to use the shorter domed ones to secure the rack. Yes it does say this in the book but I didn't look first and I suspect others will overlook it too. If you do not use the shorter screws you risk the screws catching on the bottom rails preventing their removal. This is actually how I found just how good the handles were... :)

Pros: I'm not using this as a "hot swap" bay, but rather changing out SSD's for a hardware dual-boot system. It works perfectly for that--the two OS's never see each other and never coexist in the system at the same time, which for my purposes is ideal.

Cons: No cons noted.

Overall Review: Easy install and a good price point.

Pros: Full SATA III 6Gbps (theoretical) and yet fully removable and swapable... seriously, I've been wanting this for a long, long time! I can now switch the OS running on my machine in little more than a reboot, and they're in complete isolation from each other.

Cons: The physical layout and makeup is not well thought-out. I've deducted one egg because of this. One problem is that the case is just slightly too wide for the 5.25" bays in my case, and I don't have an odd case by any means (Antec 300). I was able to get around that with some elbow grease, though. The real thing that got me is that, as configured, it's not possible to plug a 90 degree SATA cable into _any_ of the SATA ports! If you unplug the fan, which I didn't need anyway, you can get one in. The rest of the ports are either blocked by the fan cable tether, or by the power port when the cable is plugged in. This just seems to me to be an obvious design flaw... If this was missed during design, development, and testing, I'm really not sure how, but I'd be even more flabbergasted if this was laid out this way on purpose. If the device came with new 6Gbps cables, I wouldn't have anything to complain about, but it doesn't. It's not like SATA cables with a 90 degree end are rare, either. Oh well, I can order new cables I guess. Also, the disk trays come all the way out, which seems chincy, and they're not what one might call sturdy.

Overall Review: Despite the cons listed above, I do really like the product. It does exactly what I want it to do, and gives full speed and Windows boot support, unlike e-SATA and USB 3, respectively. If IcyDock takes this back to the drawing board to iterate on the design one more time, it could be perfect.

Pros: Excellent at keeping space (and thus air flow) within your rig. Only requires one power cable for both the hot swap SSDs rather than one for each (SSHD/HDD still needs its own power cable). Two blue LEDs indicate power received to SSDs, one for each.

Cons: No actual instructions or manual, but everything is pretty straight forward.

Overall Review: I have my ICYDOCK one bay underneath my bluray driver with a difference in depth of about 1 inch, leaving me to either remove one of the bays or use tweezers/another like tool to adjust cables. This is just personal choice, nothing worth removing an EGG for. Also, I have my two SSDs running RAID0, so it's really great on overall space saving I believe.

Pros: This was exactly what I wanted as a someone looking to neatly fit my drives into my consumer-grade server * Cheap * Swappable fan * Single SATA power source * Screwless trays (w/ 2 screw holes available if you desire) which works great for me Far more convenient than HP's 'hard drive enablement kit' required in some of their cheaper models to fit more than 1 drive.

Cons: Other IcyDock drive trays appear to be metal, while these are plastic. I am guessing this is either because of the screwless design (which seems to require a little bit of flexing), or just to keep costs down. The outer 5.25" bay itself is still metal. Not a big deal for me.

Overall Review: I've been eyeing IcyDock's previous 4 tray consumer offerings for a while and the impression that I got from reviews was they they were: * Too expensive * (some models) required light soldering to remove their noisy fans * (some models) required molex connectors to power when many modern power supplies don't offer them (the server I bought this for falls under that category). This model seems to be a direct response to those complaints and is exactly what I wanted. Side note: One of my 9.5mm drives has a 2.5mm spacer attached (don't ask), and I didn't have to remove it to fit it inside. I believe that a standard 12.5" drive would fit fine, but I can't say for sure.

Pros: - Swapping drives between trays is simple. - Economical.

Cons: - QC not as good as I expected, see other thoughts.

Overall Review: Yeah I know, nobody likes bad reviews....but here is a suggestion if you go with this unit. Before you waste time installing it, try all of the trays in each of the bays. The unit I received would not properly eject 2 trays from Bay 4- when the latch was activated, they would kick sideways and jam in the bay, requiring some fooling around trying to jiggle the tray out. I found out if I pushed hard on the side of the unit (which would be impossible if it was installed), the trays would eject. I tried the trays with drives installed as well, but got the same outcome, only they were harder to get out once jammed. Looking at the unit closely, Bay 4 was maybe a mm or so wider than the rest...probably due to low manufacturing tolerances. If it matters to you, this unit is entirely plastic with the exception of the metal top cover. I really wanted this to work, especially with the simple method of changing out bare drives, but how can I recommend a product that arrives defective? And then, of course, what do you do when it's holding up a build? I decided to cut my losses since my time is worth something- I installed a different used unit, and returned this to the Egg since I wasn't sure if the faults above are typical of this unit... and I don't want to be the manu's QC Person.

Pros: Metal frame. High, low and automatic fan setting. Easily replaced Fan. Easy sata port access. Affordable price.

Cons: Plastic trays.(They do not feel cheap though.) No individual activity lights.

Overall Review: I ordered the first one and it was marked delivered. Delivered where I didn't know. After expressing my displeasure to an extremely pleasant customer service rep, they processed a claim and I received another one 2 days later. Couldn't be happier.