Review on 💽 Black Vantec NexStar SE MRK-525ST Dual 2.5-Inch SATA Hard Drive Rack by Ryan Larson

I was looking for a trayless hot swap solution for a Pair of large (15mm) Seagate 2.5" 4TB hard drives I own. It wasn't my first choice as it was relatively cheap, but I really couldn't find anything else to go with these thick drives would (no tray) so I went ahead and bought a few. While it's not completely trayless, the trays don't have screws so the drives can be easily plugged in and unplugged. In every way it's as trayless as it gets without actually being tabletless. I'm giving it 5 stars (XXX changed to 3, see attachment) because I was pleasantly surprised at how well it works. Cheap plastic construction, yes. But they have metal where it's needed (mounting screws and inner housing se). They have plastic tabs for locking the discs, which also work surprisingly well. The back panel works as expected. As with most of these items, the cables will not snap, so use sealed cables instead of clamp cables. Two caveats. First, there's no room for airflow and very little cooling. No fans (I actually like the lack of them) but also no real case fan airflow to help. The case is designed for relatively cold SSDs and has enough space for shorter drives, but a 15mm drive doesn't have that, so be very careful. However, the 4TB ST4000LM016-1N21 drives I use are pretty cool. I use an SSD and a Seagate 15mm each with no issues. Second, since the drives are screwless, the drives basically just lie in the shell, with the plastic tabs holding them in place well, but there won't be any vibration dampening. It is clearly intended for an SSD. I don't think relatively minor vibrations from a 2.5" drive or two will do any harm to it. -4 hard drives). Update after a few months of use: still works as expected. The only thing I would add is that you need to be sure the tray is fully seated when you insert it. Give him a good shove after he clicks. I'm a little worried about this, but I don't have the drive yet, so I won't mark it Make sure the drive is seated properly in the compartment, with all four tabs. year of use. Rating to 4 stars. I didn't take my own advice and tried adding two 4GB Seagate drives, which are very large. They overheated with one under heavy use. This and the tray placement issue have hit me two or three times in the last year. So I'm lowering my rating. I was on the verge of between 3 and 4 stars but keep in mind this is not an experiment. hot-swap unit. I still think these are great SSD bays and being able to fit large drives is a bonus, but the only large drives are HDDs and HDDs just don't have enough airflow. Another addition. There were some SATA communication issues which I traced back to the drive rack. Now I can't entirely blame the vendor because right in the doc they say SATA I or SATA II and nothing about SATA III. But all new drives these days are SATA III and this product has not been updated. It really shouldn't be for sale anymore. I have to downgrade it to 3 stars for that. It turns out that modern SATA III SSDs are fast enough to live with this device even with a good cable on the edge. — Matt