4-Bay Mobile Rack Backplane for 2.5in SATA/SAS Drives - Hot Swap SSDs/HDDs from 5-15mm - Supports SAS II & SATA III (6 Gbps) , TAA (SATSASBP425)

The 4-bay 5.25 inch back plane worked out great. Easy installation, I just needed a dual molex adapter to single sata power. I was looking into icy dock but these are good alternatives.

This thing feels sturdy, high quality and does what I need it to do. I got it as a “manual dual-boot” so that my Windows drive doesn’t mess up my Mac drive and it works great for this purpose. It was easy to install and came with all the right screws to put into my Optiplex 9020

The item arrived on time and in the advertised condition. Sturdily built. One thing to bear in mind, at least in my case. You must use the provided SATA cables or your system won't recognize the drives. I initially used my old cables, and my system did not see the drives. Used the supplied cables and immediate success. Update August 2023: As another noted, you may experience fan noise. After approximately 6 weeks of use, one of the fans has developed an intermittent (fairly) annoying whining sound. It sounds like a dodgy bearing. Time will tell... Due to this I downgraded this product to 4 stars.

There are some things I really like about this 4-bay mobile rack. It looks much better than most (though the finish isn't particularly durable). The trays are lockable. And, most important, it is small enough to fit in the case of my HP Z4 workstation. Things are really tight inside the workstation but this fits perfectly, unlike the much longer alternatives from IcyDock. There are also some things that could be improved. I don't understand why (2) 4-pin Molex power connections are required. Someone suggested one was for backup/redundancy purposes but I can confirm that you need both connections for all bays to work. Two adapters from the old 4-pin connector to the newer style power connectors are included but it is still a hassle. The deal killer, however, is the two fans. They were quiet at first; I was impressed. But that didn't last. Sometimes they sounded like something was caught in them. Really loud. Most of the time they were just clearly audible—more audible than any of the multi-drive enclosures sitting next to the workstation. I was using this rack strictly for SSDs so I could have just switched the fans off if StarTech would have included a switch to turn them off. Bottom line: The unit is going back because of fan noise and the fact that you can't turn them off. Maybe I just got a bad unit but it was surprising how quiet my office became once I removed this from my system.

I purchased two of these to add to a home server build for 2.5" drives. They work great! The overall feel is solid, and the drive caddies slot in nicely. It comes with 4 SATA cables as well as a SATA-MOLEX power adapter if needed.

I did buy several of this Startech devices, for RAID configuration, on servers. They all work 100% without issues. Somehow the last two I got were defective, one a noisy fan making the RAID lights going RED with an alarm. The other one sata position 4 did not work. This caused a lot of time wasted, going back and forth on-site to the clients. What I did notice is, the shipping boxes in the pass were double but the last two I got were single with box damage. I am going to try one more time, if it happens again will go for another brand.

Solid metal hard drive bay amazing 4 hard drive expansion

I have a really robust desktop box. Unfortunately I'm maxed out on internal SATA ports - eight, and all are used. Seven with drives - a mix of SSD and HDD and one CD/DVD/BulRay combo. I also have a bunch of NAS and a few external drives. I need more SSD's and am also tired of the clutter. My case has an unused full sized bay available, so I've been looking for a solution. This is absolutely perfect! The build quality is what you'd expect for the price. The only plastic are the the bay doors. The case is anodized aluminum (rugged and dissipates heat), the trays/drive enclosures are chromed steel. SSD's run cool anyway, and with the case heat dissipation and fans, they stay only a few degrees over my case temp. I don't hot-swap so can't comment on that feature. You could even use this for a compact RAID system, assuming you use a RAID card. I picked up a PCI-E controller that supports RAID and SATA III. I'm not using RAID currently but may in the future. I needed more SSD's for my "project" drives and backup to my NAS. The uses for this little box are many. Build a storage box, multiple RAID box, or add more drives. Includes 4 SATA cables and power connectors.