ICY DOCK2 Bay 2.5 SAS/SATA HDD/SSD Mobile Rack for External 3.5” Bay | ExpressCage MB742SP-B

My first impression upon lifting the package was how heavy it was; the construction of the chassis is solid and impressive. The trays and latches are ABS plastic; however, the quality is above-average.The tool-less nature of the trays is appreciated, although the drives can be more securely attached with included screws; if I were using mechanical drives instead of SSDs I probably would have gone with that option just to dampen the possible vibration.The only small issue I had with installation was having to re-seat the trays/drives with some extra force in order to get the SATA connectors on the drive to properly seat with the backplane; I don't believe I'd use this in a hot-swap scenario for that reason, but your mileage may vary.The indication/activity LEDs are a nice touch, work perfectly (my drives are plugged into a simple SATA controller running on unRAID) and are not obnoxiously bright; just a nice mellow blue.One possible hiccup (which did not apply to me given my configuration) that folks may encounter; the two SATA data ports (the chassis is powered with a single SATA power connector) have no indication (either on the chassis or in the brief instruction manual) as to which data port maps to which drive. If you are modding this chassis into an existing RAID array where disks must be re-connected to the same previous ports, you may need to experiment to find the right order.Otherwise, would recommend this chassis to anyone.

I'm giving this product 4 out of 5 stars ONLY because I have not given it much use. The bay adapter is the same size as an optical drive bay with the standard placed screw mounting holes on the sides which makes this an ideal buy for a variety of desktop tower cases. The enclosure is made out of metal and the two 2 1/2" drive bay "drawers" are made from high quality plastic or polymer or something like that. They both have an easy way to securely mount a 2 1/2" drive to the tray and the screws are good quality metal as well. The way the full-sized hard disk mounts is great as well. Everything fits snugly and allows for another device above or below if there is one available in your build. Also the cable mounting points are positioned pretty good where they still allow for the use of 90-degree SATA data cables for instance. I have seen some enclosures that I liked very much in my days but the position where they installed the power and data ports on the rear caused issues when dealing with another full-size bay (5 1/4") above or below it. I'm not sure if I would be able to offer any comments now or into the future regarding the durability of the 2 2 1/2" tray's because the installation I built was not meant to be changed a lot, but from the looks of the bay drawers and the several times I have swapped out different drives in them have been a pleasurable and uncomplicated experience for me. The spring loaded mechanism that opens the trays seems built very well. I have been cautious and may even use the word "delicate touch" when installing the trays as well because I don't "slam my stuff around" treating it roughly. However, I would be interested in reading about someone whom may have picked up 2 identical SSD's at a decent cost and giving the 2 2 1/2" drive bay drawers a durability and rough testing trial. I still favor old fashioned 7200 RPM Hard drives because of their gigabyte to dollar appeal, but the performance of running the operating system on an SSD of adequate size is equally nice. I've come to realize an SSD of roughly 480GB to 512GB is plenty for a power user... plenty of room for the OS and updates and your favorite 3rd party apps like Google Earth, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Handbrake, Freac, Infrarecorder, etc. For people whom don't store a ton of stuff locally on the OS drive, it's plenty. If your into ripping a ton audio CD's and stuff like that then by all means, plan ahead and get a 2TB SSD or above and consider running them in a RAID 1 config or keep backups.Overall, I am highly pleased with the accessory I picked up and hope it will provide me some modest pride if I'll ever be able to "show it off" to someone whom may be impressed and into custom builds. I'd buy another if I needed it for a personal or a for sale build, but I do want to give this drive bay a decent amount of criticism before I say much more. But, again, overall, this drive bay adapter does what it's supposed to do and kind screams "I'm dependable - trust me, I'll keep your precious terabytes safe"One thing to note and worthy of adding. The two SSD trays are not "lockable" so if you plan to use this somewhere security is a concern, I'd recommend to NOT buy this and look for one that has locking bays. And It might be worthy to note that this brand, ICY DOCK, seems to be a premium computer brand that is backed by a team that actually cares about the products it offers. This build in a bedroom and, well, I don't have many visitors in my bedroom these days so I'm not too worried about security. Anyone whom may not be worried about security as critical should HIGHLY consider this product, in my opinion.

I have this product 'docked' in the 3.5 inch area of a 5.25 inch dock with 2 hot-swap 2.5 inch SDD / HDD bays and it works fine in that situation. They are both ICY DOCK products, bought at different times, and brought together as needs have changed. The sleds are plastic and must be lined up with the bay properly when inserting, as plastic sled against the containing 'bay' is a tight fit. When you've done it a couple of times, you get a feel for that. Have never had a problem with I.D. products and have several of them in different machines. Recommended.

I have and will continure to purchase and use Icy Dock products. One key point for me is the interchangeability. For example, you have a 5.25 drive bay that will accept 3.5, 2.5, and M.2 Sata products. I love it!

Very good product. After installation everything was going well. System is working fine and I'm happy.Thank you.

I really wanted to like this device. I figured it was a low risk upgrade that should be pretty much transparent to the computer and operating system. Apparently, it wasn't.I ran into issues as soon as I booted. Windows Server completely slowed to a crawl, remote login didn't work, local login was super slow. Tried popping up device manager and the server completely locked up. Tried rebooting and the startup files were corrupted - Windows Server would no longer boot. Wow, not good.The silver lining was that I finally got to try out one of my Server restore images - was I doing nightly incremental backups for no reason? Will they actually work? Let's see... adventure!Apparently, those nightly backups were not for naught - I removed the Icy Dock and set things back to how they were then attempted to kick off a server restore image. Windows Server restored happily from last night's backup and I was back up and running in 15 minutes (after wasting hours trying to get the dock to work, ugh).So, buyer beware - use this at your own risk. I made an assumption that this device was going to be completely transparent and would work seamlessly but all it did was wreck my system. I ordered 3 docks and a number of extra trays... guess I'm going to have to send them all back. What a shame - it looked like a decent device too.