ICY DOCK Hot Swap 3 Bay 3.5 Inch SATA/SAS HDD Docking Enclosure Mobile Rack in 2 x 5.25 Inch Drive Bay (Include 3X SATA Cables) | flexiDOCK MB830SP-B

Was just looking for a simple, elegant, and cost efficient way to add a few more drives to my home server. This dock fit the bill. It just slides right in a double height 5.25'" bay opening that can be found in most PC cases, like mine. It was a very tight fit, and had to remove the front bezel of my PC, but that's just how my PC was set up. Once I removed the bezel, it slid right in and reattached front bezel just fine. Just plug in the two power cables and three SATA ports and you're on your way. It's nice to not have to use any screws or adapters to get the drives to fit. Just slide it in and give it a tug to pull it out. I will be using this more for backing up data so I can easily insert and remove drives on a whim as needed. I just hope the SATA ports can handle repeated insertion and removal. I don't plan on doing it hundreds of times, but at least one or two times a month. The fan speed dial is a nice feature as well. I had to swap out the back fan for a thin profile one so it wouldn't interfere with the AIO cooler in the case. Fan wouldn't spin up initially, but then turned the dial and it spun up. Guess it just needed a little extra current to get it moving. Overall early impressions are good.

On the plus side: Absolutely correctly sized. I installed it into a 2x5.25 empty bay and it fit perfectly. My drives are working as expected. It's doing exactly what I wanted - 3x3.5" drives in a 2x5.25" bay that I can hot-swap when needed. Neutral: The fan is LOUD, even at it's lowest speed. Plan on buying a good aftermarket 80MM quite fan if that's an issue for you. There's a fan speed dial to manually control the attached fan speed. A thermally controlled fan would have been MUCH better. The negatives: Although it says "Full Metal Chassis" this item is mostly plastic. The drive insert slides were a bit worrisome the first couple of inserts. You have to wiggle the drive a bit to get it fully seated. I suppose that's the nature of a tray-less drive enclosure. I'm not confident it will survive a lot of wear and tear. The drives are "on their own" once inserted. There's nothing locking them in place and the last inch of the drive is sticking out of the slot so you can pull the drive out directly, rather than a full insertion with an eject mechanism. Thankfully, the case I'm using (Plink USA 2U Rackbuy) has an external face-plate door that also locks so at least they won't fall out if I move the case. I'm kinda worried about long term vibration or any movement causing them to dislodge. Again - likely the nature of being tray-less. Conclusion: One star off for being somewhat flimsy when inserting drives and for the obnoxiously loud fan. I'm somewhat satisfied and think it's probably worth the money. I would have preferred a tray type enclosure but it is likely nearly impossible to size 3 drives into the space required to fit into a double 5.25 bay with solid trays. It will probably last long enough to have been worth it and other options are slim pickings. It's rare that a manufacturer includes a decent (i.e. quiet and efficient) fan, so why do they bother? I'd rather have $5 lower price and buy my own fan because theirs is going into the trash.

I was reworking my NAS and needed a trayless HDD backplane. These are GREAT. Well built and good design. These allow 3 HDDs in a 2x 5.25 inch bays of a PC case. Drives are plug and play. The front opening have hinged lever doors to block the air when no fan in plugged into that section. The fan speed can be adjusted by a thumb wheel accessible from the front, which I keep on high. I have never had a HDD get too hot. The cooling thermal design on these are fan-tastic. I also have one of these in a PC that I use for testing drives for bad blocks and erasing. In that one, the ports are set for AHCI for hot-plugging. My old Athena NAS backplanes (with screw mounts) would occasionally drop a drive about every 6 months. That has never happened with the Icy Dock backplanes, and I have used these for several years now. This makes working with HDDs very easy. Note: unplugging a spinning HDD gives the rack a mechanical shock, so be careful. My old Athena backplanes have a release button, but that also creates a shock. It would also be nice to power down an entire backplane with a simple switch when doing server maintenance. The Athena backplanes had a front switch for each HDD.

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

Working very well in my Unraid server. It fit into my HP Z600 server and Unraid recognized all the drives. I'm not constantly moving around my server so I don't have to worry about the driver coming loose. I really like this product.

Not much more to say - hope it lasts.

It's basically part of my case now. Getting it out is difficult. If you can, connect the SATA power before putting it in your case. As noted elsewhere, there's no dust cover and the drives just plug in. Not an issue for me, as I have a Fractal Define case which has a front "door" that I leave closed. Replaced the fan with a Noctua because I'm a snob.

First off unit doesn't fit in 2x5.25" bay as expected. Tried multiple bay locations, none worked, overall dimensions are too high, Width was fine After looking at item, drives are exposed to open air, no door, no protection, nothing to secure drives, nothing help eliminate vibration. Not sure of a good use case for this but NAS isn't it.