Pros: Works as advertised. I've bought 3.

Cons: Overlooked a vital part. This is not really a con, just something to keep in mind. On the front of the unit, on the bottom, there are 5 little power icons, each of these is next to a switch. At first i thought these were LEDs, i even wondered why they weren't lighting. THEY ARE NOT LED, they are the power switch which turns each drive on individually. I have 3 of these units. The first one i installed, everything booted and worked fine. This first unit must have had the power switches in the on position when i received it. The second unit i return twice thinking i received a dead product.

Overall Review: I've bought about 5 of the single try units also. Overall i'm very pleased with the quality of iStarUSA products.

Pros: Looks good, has individual activity LED per drive, and is made of metal for better cooling. Full HDD load for several hours yields ~85 DegF.

Cons: A petty gripe is that the LEDs are green and red, and I would prefer blue and red.

Overall Review: I have been running this with 5x 2TB Samsung drives for 3 weeks or so connected to a 3Ware 9690SA-8i in RAID5. The individual LED activity lights are very useful. I fit this, on it's side, in a Thermaltake Bach HTPC case by removing the drive bay door. It sticks out a bit because it hits my MB, but it looks ok. I am happy with the quality metal construction.

Pros: Holds my 5 hard drives (4 in RAID1+0) and keeps them cool with a very effective rear exhaust fan. Been running 24/7 for over a year. Uses real metal - this isn't some plasticfest.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: Buy it if you need it.

Pros: Currently holding 4x 1.5TB Seagates and a 640gb WD drive -- absolutely no issues with cooling. Slid right into place, attached the cables, popped in the drives. Completely painless. The fan toggle (HIGH/LOW) is very handy for me, since this is running a few feet from my bed. Fan keeps everything around 35*c on low, which is perfectly acceptable.

Cons: Relatively expensive. The fan is pretty loud on high, but that is easily remedied.

Overall Review: Not a con, but when put in my Lian-Li PC-16A there is ~1-2mm of a gap on the sides between the unit and my case bezel. This isn't a fault of iStarUSA's doing, rather, it is due to the fact that Lian Li uses wider 5.25 bezels (the actual drive space is the same, fits perfectly) so there is a bit of a gap. Just a warning: my unit came with all of the power switches OFF. They aren't just power toggles, and have a distinct ON and OFF position, and it took me a second after seeing a "no boot drive found, please insert installation media" message to realize what was going on. Again, not a problem, just something to keep in mind. I can't really say anything bad about this. It really just serves to hold drives and route power and data. Neither is too hard to pull off, and this does it perfectly.

Pros: I have small tower for my linux box and there was always problem to fit my 8 hardrives with proper cooling and air flow. This helped so much, very happy with it. it only takes 3 big slots and you are able to fit 5 drives, now I have little bit bigger tower with two of those

Cons: would me happier with better quality fan (something more quiet) or at lest easy way to replace it for one

Pros: Very solid, high quality build. When they say no skew, they mean it. Trays slide in and latch into place with no need to wiggle them as is common in other backplanes. While some complain about the recessed power buttons, they are actually one of my favorite features. Most backplanes either don't have them, or if they do they are very easy to accidently hit, or require a key that inevitably gets lost 3 months after you buy the thing.

Cons: Cooling on this thing is kind of loud. I ended up replacing the fan with a much quieter one (note: if you do this, the 80mm fan it comes with is 20mm deep not 25mm... I ended up going with a 15mm and used a rubber gasket to hold it in place. Also it uses a non-standard fan connector, so a little soldering is required). Instructions are terrible, but these things are fairly straight forward. You don't need to connect up all the provided power connectors... they are just there if you need them (multi-rail PSUs, etc)

Overall Review: Good solid product. Probably wouldn't use if noise will be an issue, unless willing to do a little modding.

Pros: * Hot swappable * Metal construction * Drive activity lights * Good cooling * Audio alerts on drive temps * Comes with all SATA cables with clips.

Cons: * Instructions could be better, but most folks wont need them.

Overall Review: I knew this going in, but this is not a raid system of any kind. It's a hot swappable drive cage. If you don't have a hardware or software RAID solution already you will need a RAID card or use software RAID to add that functionality. The drives are mounted vertically instead of horz, but they wouldn't be able to fit 5 drive sleds into three 5" drive bays otherwise. I ordered two for my NAS server and I'm quiet happy with them.

Pros: Worked right away and did not notice any obvious flaws in its design. Seems to be of decent quality.

Cons: Would like a more quiet fan, but really not that bad. Instructions are somewhat vague.

Overall Review: Other reviews on iStarUSA backplanes had me a little worried about the loudness of the fan, but where its at in my case its not that bad. (I have a long 4U so the sound has to go all the way through the rest of the case which acts as a muffler) As others have mentioned the instructions are not very clear but every drive has a button you have to push with a paper clip on the front of the unit in order to supply it with power.