I purchased two of the Icy Dock adapter to fill the fill the four 5.25 slots in an iStar server case. They are not tray-less, but work well in my server and I won't be pulling them out unless the HDD fails. Trays actually provide a better drive connection to the back-plate. The end result was 6 2tb drives (total 12 tb) in a 4u server case, that can be services from the front without pulling out the server. The iStar case I have has 3 more 5.25 slots and I am contemplation purchasing a 4x3.5 for 3x5.25 Icy dock when I need expansion. The fan on the unit produce average noise levels. For a server that is in another room that's fine, but if you were to use them in a home theater pc (HTPC), I would change them out to a silent fan. The fan is mounted behind the units and are easily remove and have a 3 pin connector. The back-plate has 2 sata power connectors and 3 sata drive connectors, one for each drive. The are really direct connect drive and the unit raid or pooling or multi drive over a single sata connection. So, if you add one of these you need 2 power connectors and 3 sata cables. Icy Dock built a quality product the works well.
Excellent device. Easy to use. Simple USB plug-in. Was able to recover data from my system disk, which I had to replace because some blocks corrupted, and the system couldn't be recovered. New disk, reinstalled system, back up and running, but without my old data. This Docking Station let me recover it all. Watch out for other interfaces which don't work on this kind of disk (Dell Inspiron internal HDD). You can use this, with a spare HDD, as an external drive.
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