ICY DOCK 4 Bay 2.5" SAS/SATA HDD & SSD Hot Swap Cage for External 5.25" Bay | ExpressCage MB324SP-B

I have about 4 of these - not all the same model. If you like me have old tower type PCs and want to run a NAS or two or three, these allow easy access to 4, 8, 12, 16 etc. drives all from the front bays. It does of course require that your system supports that many SATA/SAS drives, most motherboards for PC use will support perhaps 6 so you will most likely need a SATA plug PCI card or more if you want it all running on a single system. Each drive will still need a SATA/SAS cable - this doesn't change that fact.Once mounted, it's very easy to add/remove a drive. Note, your OS must be setup to support hot-pluggable devices before you do this. It's not a typical configuration to have the SAS/SATA drives set as hot-pluggable. If not, then just power down the system first, replace the drives, and power on again. It's very easy to slide the drives in and out this way. If you have a NAS, disk failures are "normal" so this makes replacing a disk routine and easy (compared to having to take the case apart etc).CAUTIONI've had this unit running on several systems in 24/7 power on state. No issues. Note, airflow will be important - these disks are close to one another, so be sure there's a feed of relative cool air to push over the SSDs - or they will heat up and fail. Remember to set the little jumper in the back to enable the fan(s).Putting this into your case can be tricky - I suggest attaching all cables before putting it into the case, as space will be tight getting all the SATA/Power cables attached.As a NAS running, you may be sure to mark with a label, which port inside the case each slot is attached to. This will help identify which HDD needs replacing later. This is one thing this unit does not have that professional grade equipment has - a status LED where failure mode can be seen per disk. If you can pull an array offline, there's a SMART feature where you can get the LED light to flash to identify it - but if you like me run it 24/7 this isn't an option. Labels or a documentation sheet will be the only way to properly identify a failed drive.Some cases may be a bit harder to mount this unit in - it's pretty tight. But once in, it's sturdy using your case for support. If you have a case with side rails where you can easily slide a unit in and lock it, it will really make life easier for you.Only problem I've had with ONE of the units is that one of the 1 slots is hard to make contact with the back-board and it was a bit tricky to get the drive recognized. It may be the cartridge the drive is in and not the back-board. I was able to make it work, but I also don't replace the drives daily - if you expect a lot of activity like this, you may need to look elsewhere for something meant to safely insert/remove drives many hundreds of times.

Once I connected this enclosure to a known good disk controller, it worked perfectly. My initial impression was that this device was flaky but that's because I had it connected to a (new) disk controller, I had purchased from Amazon at the same time I purchased the ICY Dock enclosure. Now that I have it connected to a known good controller, this enclosure is performing flawlessly. I have all 4-SATA ports populated and reads and writes are fast and flawless.Edited in June 2022: I still recommend this drive enclosure but here's my history with it. First of all, the power connector in the back of the unit is a SATA power connector so it doesn't seat firmly like a Molex connector would. That's like, whatever. Just make sure it's in there tight.Secondly, I expected the drive lights to be activity indicators. They are not - only power. I'd like it if they twinkled whenever data was being read / written. Whatever.Thirdly, The fan failed after a couple years. It whined like crazy so I disconnected it. My SSDs never go above 33 degrees C (as reported by CrystalDiskInfo). In other words, the fan doesn't do much anyway - IF YOU'RE RUNNING SSDs. If you have spinning hard drives in there, though, those things generate lots of heat and you will need a working fan. I recommend using only SSDs.Edited again (4/29/23): CrystalDiskInfo does not read temperature, either because I have these SSDs in a RAID 0 configuration, using MS Storage Spaces or because the controller or the Icy Dock unit doesn't support it. The bottom line is that maybe my drives are indeed getting hot under load but since I can't read the temps (it always reads 33 degrees C.), there's no way of knowing, which is pretty messed up. I noticed that CrystalDiskInfo also does not read temperature information from an external drive I have connected via USB 3.0. But this is a CrystalDiskInfo issue and not an Icy Dock issue.I still recommend this unit.

Overall, this is a pretty good value - that is, it's inexpensive and works okay. It's as easy to install as can be and drives fit the carriers well. All needed hardware is supplied and the internal power distribution requiring only a single power connection s a nice plus. Despite other comments about fan noise I don't notice it at all. The latch touchiness I mentioned is potentially troublesome - a drive could spring out unexpectedly and so I simply avoid being anywhere near that button. Since I bought this basically as a test of the product - I'm planning to use a similar docking solution for an upcoming project - I didn't think that the issue was worth the effort of returning for replacement. (For that upcoming project I suppose I'll end up spending a little more for a solution with metal parts and more, y’know, robustitude.) In the meantime, this'll do for my work-a-day desktop and I'll continue to avoid that latch. Otherwise, no problems, it works, and the cost is reasonable.