Icy DockExpressCage MB326SP-B Hot Swap Cage for 6x 2.5-Inch SATA SSD/HDDs in 1x 5.25-Inch Bay

This is my third Icy Dock product and this one is very niche. I am guessing you have a lot of SATA SSDs is you are looking at this product as it handles eights SSDs in one 5.25" drive bay.Please note there are actually THREE versions of this hot swap bay. This particular one does not have a locking mechanism on the individual drive bays. This version also has eight SATA port connectors on the back of it. Another version has two SAS HD ports which make the wiring much neater and simpler, but you obviously need SAS HD cables for it.The one disappointment is that the screw holes on the side of the unit do not match up with my case, so the unit is loose and not screwed in. My case is made by Lian Li, a very reputable case manufacturer and I note from two other people's reviews that they have had the same issue.Other than this, the unit is built like a tank. Very sturdy, very well made and it looks good too. I am very pleased with my purchase even though I can't screw it into the computer case.

Love this device and holds my 2.5 inch drives in a single 5,25 bay. As SSD are used not a big heat issue either.

I just bought one of these for a machine that has been gradually getting more drives added and where the only spare bays were 5.25 inch. With this device I moved two existing 2.5 inch drives from a 3.5 inch bay to a 5.25 inch bay and added a new 2.5 inch drive leaving me with a free 3.5 inch bay and three free 2.5 inch bays.There are a few things to be aware of, some of them are things that could potentially be improved, others are intrinsic to the basic design of the product.The cage is shallower from front to back than an optical drive. This is a mixed blessing, on the one hand it means more wiring room. On the other hand it can make access to the connectors difficult if the adjacent bay is filled with an optical drive. I had to unscrew my optical drive and pull it forward to access the connectors.The screw holes are pretty shallow and so short screws will be needed. To be fair the cage comes with appropriate short screws but if your case needs special screws or uses non-screw mounting methods it may be an issue. I don't think there is much icy dock could have done to fix this, there simply isn't much space left when you put two 2.5 inch drives next to each other in a 5.25 inch bay.The trays can be a little tricky to insert, if you try to insert them by pushing on the handle then the handle is likely to click shut before engaging properly with the cage. Pushing as far as you can on the body of the cage and only pushing on the handle after it engages works much better.The back panel is very crowded, you will need straight connectors, don't expect to plug in right angle ones without stressing stuff or blocking up other ports. You will probablly end up needing to use an adapter to hook up power (I used https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0002GRUV4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ).The fans seem pretty quiet even on high and basically inaudiable on low (or auto in a cool environment, presumablly on auto the fans will speed up if things get hot). I left mine set to auto.

I bought this along with a dedicated SATA card to keep the cables relatively neat.It is soooo convenient to have this. I can just pop in a drive and access everything. As I use both Windows and Linux, it's great to be able to access an array of files on both OSes.Easy to install, simple to use, looks nice and just works. No faffing about needed.

This drive cage appears to have good build quality and is pretty good value - and functionally works as expected. I was even able to access and swap drives for the first week after installing the cage (beyond that I hadn't needed to). But fast-forward almost five months... and imagine my surprise when I was only able to remove the top two drive sleds :/ I had a total of five drives installed and three remained trapped. The force required to (attempt) to pull the levers of the remaining three drives was jocular... and they still didn't move further than swinging out to 90 degrees. I didn't want to risk damaging the cage further by forcing anything so have now decided to consolidate my storage into one larger drive (more expensive, but probably a move for the best).So I had high hopes for this cage and to be fair, other than the epic fail of not being able to remove the bloomin' cages (one of its primary selling points!), it has worked flawlessly as far as Windows 10 is concerned, with all drives being recognised perfectly ok - no problems there. So what's preventing some drive sleds from being removed? Maybe the heat from the SSDs or PC has slightly warped and affected the tight tolerances of the cage plastics. I don't know, but it's a little frustrating.My final point here isn't so much a criticism of the cage itself, but rather the inevitable crowding of wires in your PC when you shove 5+ drives in to it! This cage fault may well turn out to be a blessing in disguise, and it will feel pretty darn nice to have an uncluttered PC again ;)If you don't intend to be swapping drives much, and are using this drive cage more for long-term storage then it's still a fine product. I would recommend removing the entire cage if you need to access drives at any point (that is unless your unit is working well to that end).Not bad overall though.I gave this a 3/5, would have given 3.5/5 if possible as it's still not a bad little piece of tech at all. Just needs some tweaking to the design to allow for long-term safe usage.

I purchased this to add 6 x 2.5" drives to my PC.Easy to fit and install drives into it, you will need 6 free SATA connectors, I purchased a card to do this.Didn't really need 6 but I had the drives so thought why not use them, mainly use it for Virtual Machines and archiving.No negatives, though it would be nice to have drive activity lights that work instead of just power lights.