With the prices of hard drives coming down as rapidly as the capacities are rising, more gamers and enthusiasts are using multi-drive systems. Most new systems are using SATA technology and many motherboards now support SATA RAID. Many system builders may likely build a PC with the hard drives setup to have one boot drive and one data drive, or with multiple drives in a RAID array for increased speed or redundancy.
Most computer cases only have room for three to five 3.5" device slots, with one of them being exposed to the front of the case (generally for floppy disk drive use). So if you want more drives you would either look at getting an external enclosure, or better yet, an internal enclosure designed to accommodate more drives.
Today I am taking a look at the
Icy Dock MB455SPF 5-Bay Internal SATA Drive Enclosure that holds five SATA drives in the space of three 5.25" device bays. Here is some published data on this product from the Icy Dock web site.
Description:
"Full aluminum built cooling body constructed to fit five drives within a three (5.25") bay fitting, the MB455 Series follows the tradition of industrial systems' needs for stability, durability, toughness and high sensitivities for mass storage operating conditions. It's equipped with a hot swappable fan that may be detached if confined by depth limitations when integrated, or if replacement is necessary. Our removable fan requires no tools or wiring, simply swap with a new fan and back to operation! It is space saving and user friendly for industrialized system solutions."
Features:
» Drive Fit: 5 x 3.5" Hot Swappable SATA I or II
» Device Fit: 3 x 5.25" device bays
» Internal drive security, exchangeability, expandability and maintenance capabilities
» Compact and space saving for multiple drive fit
» Durable aluminum built cooling
» Huge warm air outtake fan cooling that's detachable
» Advanced drive monitoring system built internally w/ visual & audio indicators
Specifications:
» Item Number: MB455SPF-B
» Internal Host: 7 pin SATA
» Drive Fit: 5 x 3.5" SATA I / II
» Drive Bay: 3 x 5.25"
» Transfer Rate: 3 Gb/sec.
» Insert & Extract connection via: 15 pin direct hard drive connection
» Structure: Aluminum body w/ partial plastic
» Drive Cooling: Detachable rear outtake fan w/ aluminum heat dispersion
» Alarm Indication: Audio & Visual
» LED Indication: Drive activity/overheat/failure, Fan working/failure status
» LED Display Color:
» Green: Device Power
» Amber: Drive activity/overheat/failure
» Red: Drive failure
» Drive Security: Drive tray locking mechanism
» Dimension (L x W x H):
» 220.0 x 147.0 x 127.0 mm w/ fan
» 185.0 x 147.0 x 127.0 mm w/o fan
» Weight: 3.60 lbs.
