ICY DOCK 8 Bay 2.5 SAS/SATA HDD/SSD Hot Swap Backplane Mobile Rack Enclosure for 2 x 5.25 Bay (2 x MiniSAS HD) | ToughArmor MB508SP-B

Works like a charm. Solid metal design, good airflow above and below for each slot, and a single power connector for all four (separate SATA data cables, one sata-power cable).Being me, I took the thing apart. Five screws and the backplane comes off, one more and its circuit board can be taken out and examined. Totally trivial, very well seated and secured... notches into the frame... zero wiggle room (good!). I counted 9 capacitors on the power distribution bus so they didn't cut any corners there. Inserting an HDD did not glitch the power for the other drives that were already in. I give the backplane a big thumbs up for design and engineering.The drive bays are solid. Considering that we are cramming four 2.5" drives into a 5.25" enclosure, the design is very good. The bottom of each bay drops out a little to give the bottom of the drive a little space. The areas near the screw holes are flush, though, but it didn't seem to have any issues mounting the seagate HDDs I had without a plastic protector (clearance on the HDD drive mounts is about 1mm to the drive's circuit board).It is not screwless... requires four screws (flatheads are included). Two are round holes, two are oval. Not sure why they didn't use round for all four but the two round holes are near the connector side so the drive's connector is guaranteed to be properly aligned. Easycakes, and honestly you only need to use two screws (in the round holes nearest the connector) anyway.The fan is the only downside, being small and noisy, but I still give the device 5 stars for several reasons. First, they included a fan control switch (OFF, LOW, HIGH settings). Second, airflow looks good for all four slots. In terms of the fan control, no point ever using 'HIGH'. Just use LOW or OFF. The LOW setting is definitely audible which is unfortunate but there isn't a whole lot of room on the design side considering the fan has to fit the height. On the plus side, not only is there an 'OFF' position (if you have SSDs, you don't need the fan), but if the case itself has good airflow you can physically remove the fan with two simple screws to open it up and allow the case airflow to handle any cooling requirements. The fan's power able goes to a connector and just pulls off, so its easy to remove.In fact, if you really wanted to and didn't want the hot-swap, you could unscrew the whole backplane and just use it as four permanent slots. Silly I know, but the case is so well engineered that it has that flexibility if you wanted it.Fan tests, Four 1TB Seagate HDDs. Writing mean all four drives writing continuously for 20 minutes or so. Temperatures taken using SMART info (all four returned the same temp within +/- 1C):idle, low fan: 26CIdle, no fan: 27C (i.e. PC case fan only, no direct airflow)writing, high fan: 38Cwriting, low fan: 41Cwriting, no fan: 47C (i.e. PC case fan only, no direct airflow)So with all those features and easy modding, ICY gets 5 stars.ADDENDUM - I had one issue with the dock. On one of the machines I used longer screws to mount the dock in the bay. They turned out to be too long and infringed on the tray area, causing damage to one of the trays which I didn't realize until I tried to pull the tray out and couldn't. This was my own fault. So remember to use the low-profile screws that come with the unit... or at least make sure they don't infringe the bays.ADDENDUM2 - If you purchase your own 40mm fan you may not be able to use the LOW setting. Depending on the fan, it might not startup unless you use the HIGH setting. I still definitely recommend purchasing your own low-noise 40mm fan and not using the cheap noisy one that comes with the unit. You don't need much airflow to cool HDDs (and don't need any at all for SSDs), so find the quietest 40mm fan you can and you will be a happy camper.The only downside to the unit is having to screw the drives into the hot-swap trays... in particular, losing the screws for the trays you aren't using atm. I recommend storing the unused screws in their plastic bag IN one of the unused trays.-Matt

ICY DOCK Full Metal 6 x SSDThis thing is built like a tank. I was surprised how heavy the package was when I picked it up. It feels very industrial. I ran out of space in my PC so this product was perfect. I also added a PCIe SATA adapter so I could add more drives to my case. This really cleans up the case too and keeps all the drives and wires in one compact area. I like the subtle green lights instead of the blaring blue LED's everything else seems to have these days.I almost bought the cheaper plastic version of this, but I'm glad I spent the extra money and got the metal version. This should last a very long time.Make sure you put all the wires on first before installing it in your case, otherwise you'll never get them all on later. The screw holes were off a tad, or maybe it was my case. The nature of metal is it doesn't want to flex the way you want it. Might have to put some muscle into it a bit to get it exactly lined up. The case screws they give you are vey short so they won't go into the SSD's. But the back ones don't need to be short, they didn't quite reach, but luckily I had some longer ones for the back so I used those. I also wish the SATA power was a tad closer together, my inline connectors on the wire wouldn't quite reach using the first and second connector, so I had to skip one of the them, so it took a 3 connector wire with only two of the connectors being used, the first and last connector with one in the middle not being used. Perhaps mine are just shorter, I don't know. It's not a big deal though. It's great that I only need two SATA power connectors though for 6 drives.Since I'm using SSD's that don't get very hot I removed the fan.This thing cost twice as much as my entire case, but it's well worth it. I feel like you get your money worth. I wish optical drive bay cases were more popular, the extra drive bays are so handy for products like this. If you're going to buy a case do yourself a favor and get one with some 5.25 inch bays. There are so many great products to use in them.

I was pleasantly surprised with this product. It often seems any type of conversion bay from any vendor at any price point has poor reviews or downsides to it. This turned out to be great. I had very few issues to raise with mine and even those ones weren't a big deal.I used mine to house 4 SSDs for my rig. Seeing as my case didn't have native 2.5" bays/trays it was nice to separate all my 2.5" SSDs somewhere they fit. It is fully SATA3 (6.0Gbps) compliant.When putting it all together it felt like everything wasn't going to line up, but once I was done it did. It looked great and fit in just fine.Pros:-Nice sleek look. Metal front panels look nice and are durable. Other brands use plastic and/or look cheap and use flashy "gamer" colors.-Activity/power LEDs for each drive, although my case is usually shut so I don't see them.-Only requires 2 molex ports, others require more. With a molex splitter it was easy to power both off of 1 source.-2 Fans. They move a good bit of air too. They probably weren't even necessary for 2.5" drives but they're a welcome feature.-The molex and SATA ports are spread out nicely, and line up with their corresponding drives. I've seen others where they're tight, lined up sideways, etc., making it difficult to plug everything in and maintain cable management. Plenty of room here.Cons:-Drive trays can be difficult to open and close. My SSDs were a tight fit to slide in and out, and I felt like the SATA pins could've gotten scratched in the process. I have no intention of "hot-swapping" these drives any time soon, if ever, so these aren't an issue going forward.-Could've been a little cheaper, but this price point is the norm for this type of product with these features.