[SOLVED] Any thoughts on these? Silverstone 5 Bay Hot Swap Bay Convertor

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Hi All,

Just wondering if anyone had thoughts on these? I’m tempted to get one, to replace 3 individual trayless hot swappable 5.25 inch…things. I’ll have to mod the chassis, but it’s just a case of folding some metal tabs.

Thanks!

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It’s Silverstone, it’s fine. I have one of those hot swap bay convertor cages, not Silverstone IIRC, in my file server for over a decade and I’m looking to add another. I need to rebuild the chassis quite a bit more then just bending some tabs (PSU needs a new place then). Very useful if you make sure the indicator lights work (for indicating which drive has a fault or something) which is done via suitable software.

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I have that same model in a NAS I built my parents a couple years ago. The only got-chas to keep in mind is if your case has those little bent metal shelf dividers that hold a device up while you screw it in, you will have to bend or remove them (you knew that though). Also if you ever want a 2.5” drive it is a real treat to get it to line up even with a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter. Last if you are going to use 3.5”drives that aren’t full thickness such as sea gate desktop drives, those are also a real pain to get to line up sometimes.

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the nice size fan looks handy

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Is noise a factor for you?

Some years ago I was looking for a similar product to be able to also handle 7,200 RPM HDDs without temperature issues at an acceptable noise level.

Landed at a few Icy Dock Black Vortex MB074SP-B that only house four 3.5" HDDs in a 3 x 5.25" form factor. They look quite gamery but I haven’t had any failures yet during operation (one was with a slot DOA).

Nice feature: You can switch each HDD on or off individually when opening the little front door with the fan mounted to it.

Replaced the shitty OEM fans with Noctua NF-F12s, am quite happy with them for a small 24 x 3.5" DIY disk shelf:

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That’s reassuring to hear, thanks Dutch :+1:

I wonder how well it’ll play with TrueNAS, we’ll see!

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Cheers Razor :+1: Yeah it’s a shame about the need to bend/cut shelf dividers.
I don’t see myself using 2.5 drives, but that’s very handy to know - especially if SSD’s go down in price one day down to spinning rust (though I might be dead by then! :laughing: )

That’s a good point about drive thickness, I’d like the flexibility of using enterprise drives (not SAS though) as well as Ironwolfs. I’ll check the thickness :+1:

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Fortunately not (noise), it’ll be in a dedicated space away from everyone. Interesting side point - I bought an enterprise Toshiba 14TB drive a few weeks ago, fairly quiet in my trayless drive bays, but then I put it in a cheap Dell desktop. Wow…the vibration noise it made!

That Black Vortex looks really good and has quite good density. Handy to turn HDD’s on/off and I do like the fan at the front, pulling air over the drives instead of sucking it out the back. Cheers for the headsup! :+1:

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Forgot to mention:

  • The dust filters are also good, keeps the inside of whatever case you mount them in cleaner. If you are handy you could also build your own dust filters out of better materials, they are just cut rectangles;

  • The SATA data and power connectors can use latches so cables that have them are connected pretty securely;

  • I currently operate them connected to a single 36-port Intel SAS3 expander and a Broadcom/LSI/AVAGO 9300 RAID controller, got f’d by Broadcom HBA 9400s shitty firmware that were intended for the move to ZFS and causes bugs on my systems :frowning:

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Thank you for those tips and warnings :+1:

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