SilverStone Technology FS305-12G Three 5.25" to Five 3.5" hot-swap SATA/SAS Hard Drive cage, up to 12Gbit/s Transfer Rate with All Aluminum Construction, SST-FS305-12G

Came with all bays locked, nothing outside other than the packing material. Can see some stuff inside through the rear fan but impossible to get them out even if they were the keys.

This is ideal for the rack mount case that I'm putting together - I'm already using the three existing 5-1/4" bays for a tape and an optical drive, so I'm replacing one of the 120mm front fan and 5x 3-1/2" drive combo bays with this. A bonus is that if I don't have SAS drives handy for whatever reason, or I need to use laptop drives, this unit has the flexibility to allow me to use SATA or different footprint drives. The actual cage is made of ridiculously heavy gauge metal; it would be difficult to damage, I think. And while I could wish the plastic trays were a little more robust, with care they should last longer than the case itself, and they are easy and precise in regard to insertion and removal. The only surprise in the description was that I had to guess the fan size from the part number in the photo, and I guessed wrong. I thought it had a 120mm fan; it turned out to be 80mm, but it is a nice PWM fan.

The cage seems well constructed and the technical functionality has been superb. However, I did have to replace the fan on the unit after less than 2 weeks use. The fan started making clicking sounds. As I didn't want to be without a cage, I replaced the fan with an extra fan I had. Standard power connectors, sizing, and mounting made this easy, but I knocked one star off due to the fan failure.

I installed this in the top 5.25" bays of a Dell T330 tower server chassis, and it was a perfect fit. It looks great and blends in well with the case. I was pleasantly surprised by how quiet the fan is—especially important since this Dell server is already fairly quiet. Installation was extremely easy, and I absolutely love the trayless, screwless hard drive bays. It doesn’t get much more convenient than that. While I do think it’s a bit overpriced, the build quality and overall aesthetics are hard to beat. Overall, I’m very pleased with it—my only real complaint is the price.

I have a couple old-style PC computer cases with openings for three 5.25 inch drives, and I have lots of 3.5 inch hard drives. A couple years ago, I bought a couple other, cheaper brands of these sorts of bays to fit four 3.5" drives into each of my case's three high drive bays ... that worked ... but the slots and connectors started failing over time, due to cheap construction. One by one, a slot would start failing. I've now replaced those older, cheaper, bays with a pair of these Silverstone FS304 bays, and I am initially pleased with the construction of these bays. Each point of failure on my older cheaper bays seems to have been better engineered and manufactured on this Silverstone bay. Now I expect these Silverstone FS304 bays to last quite a bit longer. Also my drives slide in and out more easily and precisely aligned, and now I no longer need to attach a custom bracket to each drive, as this bay is designed to accept naked 3.5" hard drives, as is. Good stuff, as I often see from Silverstone.