Vantec NexStar SE Dual 2.5-Inch SATA Hard Drive Mobile Rack MRK-525ST (Black)

I just put this in the Solaris server I've been building. I purchased it for my OS drives. I was impressed with the simplicity of the tray design. It's super easy to get hard drives in and out(no tools!) and the trays slide in and lock snugly. One of the problems I've read with a lot of these types of enclosures is that the drives are tightly stacked, disallowing sufficient ventilation. With this device, there appears to be plenty of space between the drives for passive air cooling(or more likely, using what's already in your case). it's certainly much roomier than the laptops these drives came from. There is a slit styled into the front of each tray for air to be inlet, and putting my finger over them confirmed that my case cooling was working.My goal has been to put together a home server on a budget, and for less than $15, this enclosure fit the bill to hold my mirrored OS drives. My one complaint is the blue activity lights on the front are VERY bright. As a side note, instead of the typical default off, they appear to be always on, and flashing during disk activity. Depending on where I decide to put the server in my house, these lights may get black duct tape over them, or maybe some sort of electronic solution (snip snip).Recommended!---------Update, August 3 2012Server has been running fine for almost a year, OS drives in this enclosure are doing great. This is bang for your buck hardware. I ended up using electrical tape to dim the bright lights, worked great.

This is a great enclosure if you like to run multiple operating systems on one computer. I have 3 SSDs. One for Windows 7, one for Linux and the main one for Windows 10. I can power down the computer and remove one tray then insert another for a totally different OS.The only issue that I've had with it is it is hard for me to grasp the two clips and squeeze them together to remove the tray. I did break the clip on one side but the tray still works. I haven't had the problem some people talk about with poor contact.I have the 5.25" two tray model. I use the top tray for the operating system and the bottom one for a secondary data drive. I ended up buying a second one of these since it was just as costly to buy a second 2 tray unit as buying two separate trays.

I read many reviews on this product and was a bit concerned about quality, But now that I have recieved and installed it I can say that most were unfounded. This is a Low Cost Item and if you are looking for a heavy duty unit then this is not for you, but if your are looking for good value on a product that the average computer user can install and use with out feeling like it is going to fall apart then the Vantec can't be beat. Installation was as easy as any 5.25 inch drive would be, slide it in install screws attach sata and power your done. The 2.5 inch drive simply snaps into the caddie then slid it into the rack. Could not be easier. Don't use a "Horse" screw driver just a small tech driver is all that is necessary no need to over tighten. The drive caddies are the weakest point they seem flimsy when empty but become much more solid when drive is installed. If you are cloneing drives and have to insert and remove often a I would get a higher quality model. My use is backup storage and transfer so this is not an issue for me. Bay looks good in my case, Drives plug and unplug smoothly. At an under $20 price point you cant go wrong.

I was looking for a tray-less hot-swap solution for a couple of tall (15mm) 4TB Seagate 2.5" drives that I have. This was not my first choice, being relatively cheaply constructed, but I really couldn't find anything else that would fit these fat drives (that was trayless) so I went ahead and got a few. While this is not entirely trayless, the trays are screw-free so the drives can just be popped in and out... for all intents and purposes, its as close to trayless as one can get without being actually trayless.I'm giving it 5 stars (XXX changed to 3, see addendum) because I was pleasantly surprised on how well it works. Cheap plastic construction, yes. But they have metal where it counts (for the mounting screws and inner case). They have plastic nubs to lock the drives in which also work surprisingly well. The backplane works as expected. As with most of these sorts of items, the cables won't click in so be sure to use pressure seating cables instead of cables with clips.Two notes of caution. First, there is no headroom for airflow and very little cooling regardless. No fans (I actually like not having fans), but also no real airflow for a case fan to offer any help. The enclosure is designed for relatively cool SSDs and there is plenty of headroom for shorter drives, but a 15mm drive won't have any so be very careful there. That said, the ST4000LM016-1N21 4TB drives I'm using seem to run fairly cool. I'm running one SSD and one 15mm Seagate in each enclosure without issuesSecondly, being screwless, the drives basically just rest in tray with the plastic nubs doing a good job of holding it in place, but there will NOT be any vibration buffering. Its clearly designed for SSDs. I do think the relatively low vibration from a 2.5" HDD or two won't hurt it, though. Don't expect to pack tons of drives into your computer with these enclosures, but it will work fine with one or two enclosures (2-4 drives).Addendum after a few months use: Still works as expected. The only thing I would add is that you have to be sure to seat the tray completely when you push it in. Give it a solid push after it clicks. I'm slightly worried about that but have not had a drive disengage on me yet so I won't dock them a star. Make sure the drive is properly seated in the tray, too, with all four nubs engaged.Addendum after around a year's use. Reducing to 4 stars. I didn't follow my own advice and tried to throw in two 4GB Seagates, which are very tall drives. They overheated with one under heavy use. That and the tray seating problem hit me a two or three times over the last year. So I'm dropping the rating. I was on the fence between 3 and 4 stars but keep in mind this is not an expensive hot-swap unit. I still think these are excellent trays for SSDs, and being able to accommodate tall drives is a bonus, but the only tall drives are HDDs and there just isn't enough airflow for HDDs.Addendum again... had some SATA comm problems that I tracked down to the drive rack. Now I can't entirely blame the vendor because they say right there on the document for SATA I or SATA II and nothing about SATA III. But all new drives these days are SATA III and this product hasn't been updated. It really should not still be sold. I have to reduce it to 3 stars for that. It turns out that modern SATA III SSDs are fast enough that they live right on the edge with this unit, even with a good cable.-Matt

Once I received the rack I put an OCZ Agility II SSD into it. Sliding the tray into the unit worked fine, however once it was in there it wouldn't come out! The tiny fragile clips don't give enough leverage to remove the tray for some drives! One of the clips broke attempting to remove the SSD and I had to pull the rack out of the machine to get the SSD out.Given the horrible design and it breaking within 30 seconds, this will be the first item i've ever returned to Amazon in 5 years of prime membership.