Stainless Steel Hard Drive Cage, 5.25" to 5x 3.5" SAS SATA HDD Cage for Computer, Hard Driver Tray With Fan Space - Adapter Bracket

For the price, it's great value. Assembly was easy enough, but I did catch the plans had parts labelled different than the parts were labeled, but it is obvious what's meant. There's no rubber mounting grommets so drive noise is transmitted to the case, but at this price and that's a minor quibble. The front mesh works great with adding a fan, just make sure the fan cable(s) is long enough.Overall, it works great as intended.

Initial impressions: (This is pre-install of any HDDs)Pros:Solid construction, and everything feels stable.Everything came as one package, and no missing pieces. I think I even have 2 extra 3x3 screws.Cons:A.So all the metal surfaces are obviously pretty sharp and not very safe. YMMV of course. But BE CAUTIOUS OF CUTS. If I had one of those metal mesh cutting gloves, i'd probably use that while handling the cage.B. So the construction instructions leave a lot to be desired. The pieces them selves are kind of labeled - but it's SUPER faint marking. You really have to look at it right, and in the right light to see. I think they probably would not have a hit to overhead if they printed this double sided or something with better instructions, and maybe used a little bit of paint or something to mark each piece.With that being said, this is probably worth the $20 I paid for it. I will update in the future when I secure my HDDs and begin that mounting process.

It holds hard drives, it holds a 120mm fan, it does a decent job.It comes disassembled and you have to assemble it yourself, but it's easy and shouldn't take more than a few minutes.In order to install a 120mm fan, I had to unscrew the front cover, then install the fan, then reattach the front cover.I gave it 5 stars because it's as advertised, but one thing I wish it had space for is a dust cover of some sort.

This is a great idea and allows fitting 5 HDD's in CD space for 4. Unfortunately does not work.Does not fit in standard ATX case. Maybe in ITX or Mini atx. Hits the MOBO in standard case. Most users of this probably want an ATX case. To use with ATX case would need either a very wide case or deep one with min 7" from front to MOBO, better with 8 or 9". Most of the cases today aren't deep enough. If you have a large case from years ago might work better. Also in order to use in standard case the tabs that support CDROM must be bent out of the way. Doable, but ruins the case if you want to use it for something else later. If there were slots in the sides where metal is bent for rigidity it might fit over the tabs, but it is not. Also is not stainless steel but that doesn't matter.

I like the concept, it's basically a 5x3 cage that's straightforward and simple, and for the relatively low price it'd be a bargain if it supported the stated drive arrangement and count.Note, it fits a standard 25mm x 120mm fan just perfectly (with _no_ tolerance to speak of, so don't go deeper than 25mm). This is contrary to the description, which states it fits a fan size of 1x12cm (i.e. 10mm x 120mm), a fan depth that is thinner than the thinnest fan I could find available. The fan (I used a Noctua Chromax F12, for reference) is mounted nearly flush with the drive assembly so all air movement is forced between the drives without room to escape first. There's a few (~2-3) mm of space between each drive when they are placed into the cage (more on this later). While I'd be a bit wary this allows enough airflow for sustained drive operation, it's not substantially less than other (much more expensive) 3x5 drive cages I have in place, and based on the fan placement I'd be willing to assume a full complement of 5 drives would have roughly similar cooling capabilities to my other cages, if all 5 drives could actually fit (see below).For context, I have a semi-large NAS system with 24 drives total currently in it, just purchased another 10 drives for it as well. The new drives are all 10TB WD Red Pro and 10TB WD Red Plus drives. Most existing drives are either WD Red Pro 3.5" drives or WD Red Plus 3.5" drives, though I also have 2 HGST 3.5" drives (basically white label WD drives), 4 Toshiba N300 3.5" drives, 2 Hitachi 3.5" drives and 2 Crucial 2.5" SSDs (SSDs aren't applicable here, they are already in a separate cage).A quick description of how drives go into the cage once it's assembled: The plastic mounting brackets fit just fine on the drive, albeit very loosely fitting in the screw holes, to the point they easily fall out of the holes until the drive is placed into the cage. Once in the cage, the pressure of the cage itself holds the bracket securely against the drive, preventing it from shifting around. When placed into the cage there are, of course, 5 "slots" for the drive mounting brackets to slide into. The "top" slot for a drive to be placed in, if one were to orient the cage so a drive label is facing "up", is actually on the left or right side of the cage when mounted into the space for 3x5.25" bays (drives are mounted "sideways" in the cage, as with other 3x5 cages). The "bottom" drive slot is of course on the opposite side, either the left or right side when the cage is mounted in place.The issue here, a pretty substantial one, is that the "top" drive slot cannot actually have a drive placed into it, at least with any of the 34 drives I have. On _all_ of my drives, the mounting screws are towards the "bottom" of the drive, when orienting the drive label side up, rather than directly in the middle of the drive. In other words, if the drive is sitting flat on a table with the label side facing up, the mounting screws are much closer to the table itself than the "top" of the drive. This means there's much more of the drive above the mounting bracket than below it when they are attached. Unfortunately, the space the mounting bracket slides into doesn't account for this, and only allows enough space for the drive to be inserted if the mounting bracket is placed directly in the "middle" of the drive itself, rather than towards the bottom. The exact same issue occurs if I flip the cage over (i.e. invert the drives when sliding brackets in), since the slide area for the mounting bracket is the same distance from the edge of the drive cage on both it's left and right side (or "top" and "bottom" when oriented based on drives being "stacked" on top of each other). This means only the "bottom" 4 drives will ever fit, unless all of your drives have mounting screws directly in the middle of the drive itself (by height).Additionally, based on the design as is, if some of your drives _do_ have centered mounting screws and other drives of yours put the mounting screws in a slightly different place (even in roughly centered but at a slightly different offset), these won't have the required clearance between them since inserted drives are only ~2-3 mm apart to begin with. This means unless all 5 of your drives have the mounting screws centered (by height) on the drive itself, and all 5 are of identical brand/model, the cage capacity is effectively capped at 4 drives max.Since there is only 2-3 mm clearance between those drives that are mounted, that means a vast majority of airflow will pass through any area that is _not_ currently occupied by a drive. This means, unless the 3x5 cage is filled with all 5 drives (which isn't possible without exactly centered side mounting screw holes for all 5 drives), airflow passing between the drives will suffer substantially. Given the very tight clearance between drives as is, I'd be cautious of (and monitor closely) drive heat even with optimal airflow between the drives, and I would be wary of adding drives to the cage that are likely to be spun up simultaneously for any sigificant length of time. Unless I were able to fill the cage and use all 5 slots, I'd be wary of adding drives directly beside each other at all, since most air will flow through the space left empty by the missing drive. This means (given the cage can only hold 4 of my drives, explained in depth above) I'd be wary to have more than 2 drives in the cage, since 3 or more drives would require one be placed directly next to another. At best, I could potentially mount one of the drives upside-down in this scenario, meaning a max number of drives I could fit in the cage would be 3, making this cage effectively a 3x3 rather than a 3x5.For those that don't have familiarity with other (generally more expensive) 3x5 drive cages, this is why other cages use "trays" that screw into the drives from the bottom, then slide into the drive cage. 3.5" drives are all of a consistent height within a very small tolerance, though where the side mounting screw holes are varies depending on the drive. By placing drives in a tray and screwing into the mounting holes on the bottom of the drive (rather than the side), this ensures the slots on the cage that the tray slides into (like the brackets slide into here) are all offset from the top of the drive by a very specific distance, since the bottom of the drive is directly attached to the tray itself and the sides of the tray dictate the height of the "slides" determining the offset from the top/bottom of the cage and from any other drives.To fix this issue from a design perspective, rather than the plastic mounting brackets/slides currently included, metal brackets would need to be cut and formed/folded in a rough L shape such that the bottom of the L would have mounting screws attached to the drive, and the upright side of the L would have a bump on it that slides into the cage (in leu of the plastic mounting brackets sliding into the cage). Otherwise, a full drive tray for each of the 5 slots would be required (crossing and covering the bottom of each drive), as with most other 3x5 cages. This would likely increase the cost of production, but without doing so I can't ever recommend the cage to anyone given it won't be able to support a full complement of 5 drives.

The instructions are amazingly useless :)Two suggestions:1. Silver 3mm long screws are used for attach the four sides, the longer black screws attach the plastic drive slides.2. Use blue Locktite and your work is near forever....Screws are properly short. You must not let them back out.Only perceived negative? I'd like a part number and contact for ordering additional plastic slides. They are L/R specific. Break one, and you won't be happy. Problem is easily avoided by offering spares.May buy more of these. The machining is good, everything fits nice and tight without wobbles, and those drive slides have an authoritative SNAP when properly in place. Was considering an alternative aluminum design - but no more. Aluminum is great for heat dissipation, but structural integrity requires steel.