ICY DOCK 3.5 inch SAS/SATA HDD Hard Drive Mobile Rack Tool Free Enclosure for 5.25" Bay | TurboSwap MB171SP-1B

To wit: The little plastic door that covers the drive bay openings appeared to have one broken attachment spoke. I had not planned to leave it in place anyway. The computer I'm using the DuoSwap in is out of the way and drives will be filling those spaces most of the time. Installation was straightforward. I had some spare rails and the attachment screws worked normally. Cable hookup (power and SATA) was unremarkable. I tested a Seagate 3TB HDD and a Seagate 5TB HDD and they both functioned normally. The eject buttons are stiff but workable. (I pushed the HDD eject button with the blunt end of a screwdriver.) The SSD slot was problematic. A 240 GB Crucial drive was recognized, but I had to "press any key" to avoid a disk check each time it loaded. A SanDisk 120 GB SSD was never recognized in spite of efforts to optimize recognition. The SSD drives had identical dimensions. Baffling. For my planned uses (computer backup, movie transfer and editing) it should work nicely. Update - 2018 0220 - The Dock is working just as before and is functionally FANTASTIC. No more worries about having to get into the computer case to add/remove storage drives. Backups are faster than when I was using USB3 external drives. Along the way, I discovered that some of the "failed" USB3-case hard disk drives in my Dead Drives box in fact just had a failed SATA bridge card or a controller or interface card problem, and the hard drive itself worked fine after removal from the USB3 case. These still-functioning drives (always test first!) could now be used for whatever an internal hard drive can do, and at the same speeds and swappable in seconds. Testing SSD vs HDD performance for a variety of tasks is easily performed. I wish I had gotten the DuoSwap Drive Caddy years ago. Upgrade to 5 stars.

I bought several ICY DOCK MB971SP-B HDD units some years back and was greatly impressed with the performance reliability and ruggedness. The units are designed to mount like a conventional CD/DVD ROM and HDDs can be accessed from the front computer face, just like a typical CD and will work with 2.5 and 3.5 SATA drives. No more opening up the computer to change out or swap drives! Just slide them in or out as needed. Both 2.5 and 3.5 drives can be used simultaneously individually or neither, if desired. Front panel switches allow either or both of the HDD units to be turned on or off. My experience with these units is so good I just bought 3 more. I only gave the unit 4 stars because the internal "flip up" drive port "dust door" is fragile and broke off on one of the older units during normal use. The unit still worked but the maker needs to improve the flip up port dust cover to make it more sturdy. Other than that, this is a great product. Don't hesitate to buy it if you work with different HDDs swapped in or out of your computer or just want an easy way to use your hard drives. In my opinion, all computers ought to come from the OEM with these units installed.

I have a "Old School" tower with a Optical bay that I can now use as a trayless HDD transfer drive to transfer (or backup) files, pics, etc.... Pros: The quality of this unit is awesome. All metal, with nice black color accents and a metal arm that helps push out the HDD with ease when removing. It works better than the competitions version. Also, there is a blue light showing HDD activity that can be turned off with a switch if drive is not is use. Nice touch. Cons: I wish this version had a lock on it. I've seen a previous version of this unit with a lock, but it may be on an older version. It's not a deal-breaker but it would have been a great addition to have.

Product works, build quality seems OK. Installation was pretty easy. If your cables are long enough you may want to connect them before you mount this all the way in the drive bays to give yourself an easier time and attaching the cables. Based on the drive's S.M.A.R.T. temperature stats, the drives in the ICY DOCK are 4-5 degrees Celsius cooler than the other drives I have in my case, so it is keeping the drives cool. But...the fan is just way to noisy to be have to work or play near this computer. With no exaggeration the noise of this product is louder than a Dell PowerEdge R430 server I have, based on a sound app on my phone. Around 58-60 decibels for ICY DOCK (with phone lying on top of the computer case and ICY Dock installed) and PowerEdge was around 56 decibels (again, phone lying on top of case). So not a big difference but Dell has 6 little fans in it, I believe, vs. the one fan on the ICY Dock. The fan can be unplugged but when I did that I did see the temperature of the drives (based again on S.M.A.R.T. stats) edge higher than the other internal hard drives, so I'm not sure this would be advisable. Summary: Easy Install Quality seems OK Keeps Drives Cool Very Loud Fan - probably not for a computer that will be on or used all the time or a living room media PC

so I've ordered 2 of these units. 1st one seemed to work great so I ordered another right? The second one had issues with the drives connecting and powering up causing errors. so I attempted (for the 1st time) to remove a drive after carefully trying to work the release not wanting to cause too much stress. it broke and I couldn't figure out how to get enough leverage on the drive to remove it well the 2nd fails, but the 3rd manages and I can now get my hand in there and remove the others. now I'm in a position to need to remove drives from the 1st unit (because it too has disconnected a couple of drives). I'm extra extremely careful and the unit is still intact, but the majority of the slots didn't want to open and I only got the drives out because one did and I could slide my hand back and remove the drives manually. I would not recommend this to anyone their latch needs some serious work along with the individual power switches for their drives (I think that is the connection glitch). amazing idea, but not worth it. oh everyone else is right and if you do go with it you'll need to bend the individual drive supports in your case to fit it.

For an "icy dock" product and at this price, I expected a little better. Doors are flimsy and they don't feel like they are man enough. They do close, but then the LED power switches are not all working correctly. Some stay on permanent and cant turn them off if needed to. Have 2 units, and both are the same.

Think of making any hard drive a "external storage" like a usb flash drive... with several Tb....

Good product but a bit pricey. My drives get considerably hotter (average 5-7 degrees) than any other drives that are not in the cage. I'd recommend replacing the fan for a NOCTUA or similar as it's quite noisy, particularly if set for full speed mode instead of auto. Having owned this product for a while, I can't help the thought that a 5-drive is over-ambitious for this form factor (3x5.25") a 4-drive cage might allow for much better airflow.

This is the third one I tried recently and it meets my expectation - simple and reliable. I returned the previous two similar products. It has full metal structure and is highly recommended!

Leider haben viele moderne PC-Gehäuse kaum noch 5,25" Laufwerkseinschübe, aber mit diesem kann mensch nicht nur 3,5" SATA-Festplatten [und mit nem passenden Adapter auch 2,5"] nutzen sondern auch noch ein Ultra - Slimline ODD [9,5mm Bauhöhe] drunter packen und somit noch ggf. nen Brenner verbaun... Ideal, wenn Platz knapp ist... Der trägerlose Wechselrahmen bedient sich quasi wie ein 3,5" Diskettenlaufwerk, nur mit extra Anschalter um eingesteckte Festplatten vor Auswurf abzuschalten. Ideal wenn es darum geht, Betriebssysteme zu wechseln oder Daten zu sichern...