ICY DOCK 6 Bay 2.5” SATA HDD / SSD Hot Swap Cage for External 5.25” Bay | ExpressCage MB326SP-B

I've used Icy Dock cages for regular HHD's for years. Loved them. Recently I've started switching over to all SSD drives, mounted in these Icy Dock cages. Love them! But, I had a problem. In the photo you can see where I have removed the old Icy Dock cage that had held 5 HHD drives in a vertical position and placed one of the new Icy Dock cages that holds 4 SSD drives in a horizontal position. Although everything works great, there is a large opening above the new Icy Dock cage. So, I went down to the local hardware store and purchased a sheet of tin that has thousands od little holes punched in it...and then painted black. Using some graph paper to make a template, I was able to fabricat a piece of the "screen" that would just fit into the opening. I then mounted a blue LED case fan on the back side of the screen. It provided a nice way to fill the "whole" and add a cooling fan at the same time! If you're reading this, Icy Dock, you might consider adding such a "Filling Screen" to your product line! I'm sure they would sell! I later bought an Icy Dock cage that held 6 SSD drives. Of course I had to faburacat a slightly smaller screen-filler. And, since the available space was smaller, I couldn't use N 80cm fan, so I used 2 60cm fans placed side by side. Works great....looks great!!!

Good value for money, easy install. Made from plastic, but that's why its not very expensive. Careful with inserting disks to ensure the alignment with the back-plane is correct.

I must say, this product has been nothing short of flawless in my setup. I've installed it seamlessly in both my HP EliteDesk 800 G2 and an ICY DOCK 6 Bay 2.5” SATA HDD / SSD Hot Swap Cage, all while running Proxmox. From the very beginning, I was impressed. All the drives were promptly detected in the BIOS, and once the operating system was up and running, they seamlessly integrated without a hitch. This level of compatibility and ease of use has been a game-changer for my system. I couldn't be happier with the performance, and it's clear that this product is not just reliable but also a true asset to my setup.

Most of the time you will pay BIG money for something like this and while I admit it is made of plastic, it is still under 200 dollars which is good enough for me. I built a diy nas with two of these and have loved every second of it. I am sporting 12 1tb old drives in raid-z2 with a total of around 9 usable tb of data. Great easy to build nas and my total cost has come out to be around 300 which for a dual cord 4 thread cpu and 8gb of ram, aint to bad (not to mention i put a cheap 2.5g NIC inside for future proofing) While this worked perfectly for me, you can easily put this in a desktop for built in raid storage if you know how to set it up yourself. Love the 85 dollar price tag on a huge value like this. Also, just for reference, people say the fans in the back are loud but tbh, I haven't heard them at all. They are keeping my drives perfectly cool too so no worries there. 10 out of 10, would DEFINITELY buy again!

This thing is made of the flimsiest plastic you've ever seen. Constantly drops connections to drives attached to it. DO NOT BUY. Find another solution.