Kingwin Universal Hot Swap Mobile Rack For 2.5” or 3.5” SSD/HDD, Internal Tray-Less SATA Hard Drive Backplane Enclosure, Support SATA I/II/III & SAS I/II 6Gbps and [Optimized for 2.5” or 3.5” SSD/HDD]

I was looking for a docking station but was not really wanting to have to plug in another device and run another electric plug to an outlet. My power strip is full. So I came upon this built-in hot swap unit. It is just what I needed. Looks great, easy install and seems to be built very well. But most important, it works like a charm. I have several sata drives from previous installs with alot of info on them, mainly pictures, and downloads, which I always tried to burn to disk and then tried to keep up with what was on them. Very hard to do with limited writing space on a disk. Impossible really. I end up with dozens of disks and only have a clue as to what is really on them. But I do have them, finding what I need is another matter.Install was like any other cd-rom like device, hook up the power and sata cable in the rear and you are ready to go. Slide in a hard drive and close the door. Requires a firm but easy push to lock the door with a solid click, opens by releasing the catch and at the same time pushing the hard drive out towards you. It will not fall out on you. It has a blue light indicating it is on and a amber light when it is reading or writing info. It also has a lock to secure the device, just don't lose the keys. One other use is so I can put a bunch of movies on a hard drive and just watch them from there.My 500GB HD will hold 100 regular dvd movies. On another drive I have 80GB of pictures and 30 GB of music, can you imagine trying to keep up with those on disk, even a blu-ray disk, you just can not write down all that is on the disk.Now it may be my motherboard or OS but I have limited success at swapping hard drives with the computer on, so I just power down, swap and boot back. Never a problem even with an OS loaded on the extra drive. Boots like it should.One thing, I have a regular case and as I said, it mounts just like a any rom device, 2 screws on each side, but on my other case, that one has the slide in mounts for the rom devices, I had trouble mounting it there because the holes in the hot swap where a bit small for my slides. They could be drilled slightly larger and it would work but I havent done that yet.I would recommend this to anyone wanting a permanent way to swap out and access additional hard drives fast and easy, without having to connect usb and electric lines. Looks great, functions perfect. I have 2 now. Excellent product and one of the best add-on devices I have bought.(Personal Note): Of all computers I have repaired, the one thing people want to keep are their pictures. Please back up all your pictures regularly on disk. You can get everything else back for the most part, do not rely on hard drives to do this. As with ANY hard drive no matter who makes it, it is not a question of "if" it will fail but "when". Burn all your pictures on a disk today...

I lucked out and found one of these used for $80 in December of 2022.There seem to be a number of brands of these same 5 bay hot-swappable enclosures that look like they were made in the same factory in China, selling under the Istar, Star-tech, Kingwin, and other brand names. While the drawer fronts may look slightly different, the rest of the case is the same including the sata backplane, fan and rear ports. I understand that these were originally intended to be installed inside tower computer cases in place of 3 5.25" drive bays. They work great as external enclosures too, which is how I am using them (I have 2 -- this one and one with Istar branding.Some things to think about when using these:1. You need to supply enough power to run all the drives. I started having some flaky results when I put in the 5th drive, and found that the power cables I was using could not carry the amperage needed to run all 5 drives. When I swapped out the cables, they ran just fine. My power supply was fine -- it was the cables. Research the amperage all the drives require while operating, and then see if the cables and power supply you are using can carry that much amperage at 12 volts. The 12 volt supply is the one that uses the power -- the 5 volt supply just runs the logic on the drive's boards, which doesn't use much current.2. You CAN run both SATA and SAS drives in these enclosures, but you have to have a SAS HBA controller or a SAS RAID controller to be able to access SAS drives. I am using a retired server PCI-E SAS RAID controller for this, and am running my drives in a RAID 5 configuration.3. If running SAS drives, you'll need a SAS to SATA cable to do this. I used a "CableDeconn Mini SAS 26P SFF 8088 Male to 4 SATA 4Pin Female 1M 3.3FTCable with Latch,Mini SAS Host/Controller to 4 SATA Target/Backplane" ASIN B07M8F1MV7 for this. This costs about $13 at the time I am writing this. Note that this cable only has 4 sata connections, so you'll need another cable to get the 5th drive connected.SAS HBAs and RAID controllers can read and write to both SAS and SATA drives in these enclosures using this cable.To connect directly to a SAS drive outside of this enclosure using this cable, you'll need a SAS-to-SATA adapter. A number of different ones are sold on Amazon -- just search for "SFF-8482 to SATA 22 Pin Adapter" and you'll find some.As I mentioned above, I have been running two of these 5 bay enclosures for about 4 years now, and they have been working flawlessly. Just be careful not to accidentally dislodge the sata or power connectors on the back of these as they don't latch in place. Keep them away from pets and children for this reason. The dual 4 inch fans are not as quiet as some of the newer DAS enclosures with their giant fans that can run at slower speeds. I have my fans set to "low", and the drives keep cool enough, and the noise is not disruptive. However, unlike most DAS enclosures, these run at native SAS (up to 12Gb/s) and SATA (up to 6Gb/s) speeds -- much faster than a single USB 3 can handle.I hope this helps some others thinking of using these enclosures.