StarTech.com 5.25" to 3.5" Trayless Hard Drive Hot Swap Bay - Removable Hard Drive Bay for 3.5" SATA/SAS Drives - Aluminum (HSB1SATSASBA)

I recently built a new system and one of the requirements was a "Hot Swap" bay so that I can swap in a drive temporarily for a project, or put a backup drive in the bay, make the backup, then remove the backup drive.My old case (a Thermaltake MK1 Cruiser) had a hot swap drive bay built into the top of the case, and it has been used extensively, as that hot swap drive bay has been used to make backups - insert the first 14 TB drive, start the "A" part of the backup, remove the first drive and insert the second 14 TB drive, start the "B" part of the backup, etc. That process has worked extremely well over years and I was very disappointed to not be able to find a case with a built-in hot swap drive bay.I found a case that has two 5.25" external drive bays (Thermaltake Core V71) and bought the StarTek Trayless Hard Drive Hot Swap Bay for one of the two 5.25" external drive bays.Before I continue, I should pass along some reminders regarding "Hot Swap" and Windows and drive letters.First, generally you need to go into the motherboard BIOS settings and enable "Hot Swap". In my experience every BIOS likes to call the setting something different, so read your BIOS manual until you find it. Also, sometimes it is a "SATA" setting, sometimes it is a PCI-E setting, so read the BIOS manual cover to cover.Second, in Windows 10 (I'm avoiding Windows 11) you will need to enable "Hot Swap" in Device manager. As Microsoft like to change things, and if I provide instructions today, Microsoft will change things by tomorrow, I'm just going to suggest you do a search for the "current" way to enable "Hot Swap" on a drive.Third, in Windows Microsoft likes to put "Hot Swap" devices in the list of drive letters depending upon which other devices exist. For example, all of my M.2 SSDs have low letters (C, E, F), and my mechanical 14 TB hard drive started out as drive "G", but I had to move it to "L" because when I plugged in a USB flash drive, or a camera's flash memory card, or inserted a hard drive into the "Hot Swap" drive bay, Windows decided to "change" the drive letter assigned to the 14 TB hard drive and put the USB flash drive, or memory card, or "Hot Swap" drive bay's drive where the 14 TB hard drive was, and give it a new drive letter like "H" or "J" or ... The net result was that the 14 TB internal hard drive became drive "L" (for now) and Windows assigns whatever it wants to the drive letters G, H, I, J, and K. What I'll probably do is assign a new drive letter to the 14 TB drive (which started out as "G", then became "L", and will probably end up as "S" or something like that).Thus, a word of caution...Make sure there are PLENTY of drive letters left unused between where Windows decides it wants to place your USB Flash drives, camera memory cards, and the "Hot Swap" drive when inserted into the dock, so that you don't have "drive letter chaos" where a program using your "G" drive suddenly finds "G" points to a different drive that doesn't have the directory tree structure and files it expects (been there, got clobbered by that).Just to be clear, the StarTech Hot Swap drive bay WORKS GREAT! if you have any problems it will probably be with how Windows assigns drive letters.

I was very hesitant to purchase this for it's price and "futureproofability", but took a gamble and it paid off. I originally was using a USB 3.0 external dock with my extra 3.5" drives, but read that the newer motherboards allowed hotswapping of hard drives and I wanted something was minimal on setup and desk space. This worked out great! I tried the hotswapping feature and it works flawlessly. The ease of use is incredible. I attempted to add a 40mm fan, but cannot find one that integrates power with this and since I am mostly using it for hotswapping, running a molex fan 24\7 just doesn't seem practical so I cannot comment on heat build up just yet. I have no issues with the door either which I read was an issue for some.Unfortunately, 5.25" bays are becoming obsolete in newer smaller builds and 2.5" drives are taking over so this product will not be relevant for many years to come, but I will always have at least one case for this as long as I have extra 3.5" drive laying around for storage. I wish I found this product a few years sooner.

This contraption was absolutely everything I wanted and more. I am still ripping all of my bluray and 4k movies to back-up HDDs. I buy 8TB drives because that is the best bang for the buck. Once I fill one, I open up my computer case, detach the old HDD and attach the new one. Was a bit of a pain to be honest. Especially when I have a lot of 4k movies and long television series that eat those 8TB up FAST. I finally had a bright idea to search for a single hot-swap unit. I use one in my NAS already but it's an 8-bay hot-swap tower. I figured there had to be one out there. Search led me to this listing and I bought it almost immediately. To be honest, for the past several months, I left the side open on my ripping PC and the HDDs would just 'hang' there on the side (well I propped them up but it wasn't ideal by any stretch). This proved much easier than mounting the drive in my tower each time I had to swap one out.Then I installed this awesome adapter and man... I can't believe how much easier things will be now. I don't just fill up my archive drives and forget about them. I end up replacing my blurays with 4k versions, rip them to my server and then have to load the HDD with the bluray version and delete it, so I don't have duplicates. I know some like to have the 1080 and 4k versions but not me. Space is valuable and I need all I can get. My RAID array is 5x18TB drives and those are filling up fast! So I'll have to buy a bigger SAS tower and 5 more HDDs for another RAIDZ1 array. Anyway, my point being, I constantly have to cycle my 7-8 'archive' 8TB HDDs to find and delete duplicates and this adapter makes that soooo incredibly easy. My AMD build allows hot-swapping with ease and I seriously doubt I ever went into the Bios to change anything. So for the negative reviews on this adapter, it's most likely a setting which can be remedied with a little bit of research. Don't blame the adapter since it can only do the job it's set up to do! It's also very high quality and should last many years and will be moved over for my next PC build. I can't recommend it enough. Wish I would have bought this thing years ago! Love it, love it, love it!