iStarUSAGroup Component and Others (BPN-DE340SS-RED)

This is an excellent hot swap bay. The construction is solid, although you can take most of it apart if you need to. It does what it sets out to, and looks good while doing it.The few issues that i have with it are fairly minor and really personal preference things.The fan, even on low was easily the loudest thing in my case. That sounds worse than it is though, I run completely silent systems other than the sound of hard drive internals. Even on low this fan could be heard pretty clearly 4-6 ft away, I pretty much expected that though, so i replaced the fan with an 80mm gelid hooked to a fan controller. I did have to use different screws and completely remove the little fan shroud that is attached however, as the width of the stock fan is unusual. The connector on the board is also a non standard 3 pin fan header, so you either have to do some splicing of the original fan wires or cutting around the header and force a fit.Would be nice if the leds were also red instead of the blue that all colors of this rack seem to contain. This can be somewhat fixed if you take the unit apart and coat the clear plastic that carries the led light with red electrical tape.Would be nice if there was a way to accomodate 2.5" drives easily. You can fit them in, but on anything other than the bottom it will be a bit of a balancing act. Again, not a surprise here, would just be a bonus.Overall a fantastic unit and I would not hesitate to buy another unit... just factor in the cost of a secondary fan unless you have an already noisy system

Pros: looks ok, has led shutoff switch, fan low\high switchCons:- Loud fan, easy to replace though- Very flimsy latch handles, broke one off while opening the latch within the first few moments of operation. The pin which holds the handle is basically held by a millimeter or so of very brittle plastic, and when you extract an HDD you basically pull it out from the connectors (which takes some force) using this latch. The result is predictable. Suggestion for users - employ a different method: open the latch using the handle, but do not use it for removal of the drive itself; instead, grab the door, and pull on it, as it is very much sturdier.

I have another set of hot swappable bays on another pc. When I got those I thought they were the coolest thing.But Now. WOW these are probably the best cages I have EVER experienced. I love the structure, very solid. The functionality is extremely professional. And above all I thought the front covers (red pigeon eyes) were fantastic. Somebody really put a lot of thought into this one.Installation was a snap. No problems. Just slide it in, hook up the cables and you're done. Easy Peezy.The only negative point is the fan, it is a little loud, but I can live with that. It would be helpful if iStarUSA had a web site that I could order from directly or get some sort of support from. Also a parts replacement page would be helpful.

iStarUSA BPN-DE340SS is an excellent hot swap cage. it's very well built and flawless in every possible way. Sliding the hard disks in and out is very smooth and the locking mechanism is perfect. The fan is far from being quite, but that is expected from an 80mm fan with enough CFM to keep the four drives cool and full load. I went ahead and replaced the fans with quieter fans and I am extremely happy with the cooling and low noise level produced with the new fan. Replacing the fan requires some creativity though, this is due to the fact that the fan that comes with this cage is a bit thinner than the common 80x25 fan.

Nice units, I have three and they've been working nicely. My only word of caution is to be very gentle on the door latch. Pull on it only enough to release the latch, then grab the door and open. Do not pull the latch itself to open the door or pull on it very hard or far or it can break. If a latch breaks the door won't lock closed and the unit is pretty much toast.

This 4-disk caddie is awesome! The whole unit was easy to install and it only requires 2x SATA power power plugs to power all 4 disks. The attached fan in the back of the unit is a nice touch. We're using this for a 4-disk RAID10 attached to a LSI 9211-4i controller. Flawless operation so far!

The title of this broduct says 2 bays but it actually occupys three 5 1/4" bay drives.I dont have this, I'm just trying to save someone some hassle.