MB516SP-B

Been running this ToughArmor for about 8 months now in my Lenovo P520 and it's been rock solid. Was initially torn between this and some cheaper alternatives, but the full metal construction and MiniSAS HD connectors sold me - glad I spent the extra money. Installation was pretty painless once I figured out the cable routing. Fits perfectly in two 5.25" bays, though you'll want to make sure your case has enough depth. The included SAS cables are good quality and the connectors feel solid. My only minor gripe is that the mounting screws could be a bit longer - had to be careful not to cross-thread them. Hot-swap functionality works exactly as advertised. I've pulled drives while the system was running multiple times with no issues. The individual drive status LEDs are bright enough to see clearly, and the activity indicators actually help when troubleshooting. Build quality is genuinely impressive - this thing feels like it could survive a small earthquake. Running a mix of Samsung 870 EVOs and some older Intel enterprise SSDs with no compatibility issues. Temps stay reasonable even under heavy load, though I do have decent case airflow. The drive trays slide smoothly and lock securely - no wobbling or loose connections. Only real downside is the price, but you get what you pay for. This isn't for casual users - if you're just looking to add a couple drives to your gaming PC, there are cheaper options. But if you're building a proper server or NAS and need reliable hot-swap capability, this is worth every penny. Would definitely buy again for future builds. ICY DOCK clearly knows what they're doing with enterprise-grade storage solutions.

The power cables are very cramped. It is difficult to install with these. Also, once the power cables are installed it is impossible to change the fan settings. Cheap fans are included. The led indicator is very nice and it will blink when the disks are under use.

I had no idea it was possible to fit 16 drives into two standard 5.25" drive bays, but apparently it's possible. Currently, I'm only using 8 drives with it, because I don't have another $400 to spare right now, but I'm extremely happy with the setup as is. I haven't had anything to complain about here. If you want an extreme amount of storage in a small form factor, this is one very good way of achieving that. Alternatively, you could buy fewer, dense (e.g. 10+ TB drives) and achieve a similar effect, but a larger number of smaller drives in RAID10 is probably better from a read/write performance perspective. I should know better, but I don't always carefully research my hardware purchase. In this case, I did, and avoided potential disappointment. Some advice: Drive size: not only are these 2.5" SATA/SAS/SSD drives, they're only 7mm tall. Check the height. If the height is listed in inches, and the math comes out to just over 7mm, that's technically a 7mm height drive and will probably be fine--at least it was in my case for some Seagate drives. Double, maybe triple check that your drives are going to fit, to spare the wasted time on returns. Data cables: You can use standard SATA data cables to your motherboard or PCI expansion cards with this, but that's a really bad idea. This drive bay has 4 Mini SAS data slots, each one is equivalent to 4 sata data cables. You might not bother to get a Mini SAS expansion card, and instead use 4 Mini SAS ->4 SATA "breakout" connectors. For the sake of cable management/sanity, please don't try this, get one 4-slot MiniSAS card or two 2-slot Mini SAS cards; ensure your motherboard has an appropriately sized, available PCI slots--this will be easier if you get 1 card with 4 slots, though frankly they are a little expensive, check your options. Power: You only need 4 standard power connectors. Really shouldn't be the primary drain on your power supply, Air Flow/Fan: It's expected this is installed on the front of your case, by default it will blow inwards, meaning if installed on the front, air flow is front to back. You could reinstall the fan the other direction if you wanted to install this on the rear of your server, like some psychopath. It also has a spare Installation: The drives are hot swappable, so there's no reason to bother installing them until the whole bay is safely installed in the system (obviously, completely compatible with either a desktop tower or a rack case, if it has at least a 2x5.25" drive bay slot). Also, there are hard drive covers on the Mini SAS port which I found were surprisingly difficult to remove after I already installed a bunch of other hardware into my server, but obviously are good to have in shipping and maybe if you're clumsy. Might also want to adjust the fan speed to its desired setting before it's a challenge for your oversized fingers to reach into a tightly cabled corner of your case. These are tray drive bays, not trayless, meaning you have to screw in the drive to a little platter you pull out of the slot before reinserting it, but this takes 15 seconds, just keep your spare screws stored in a safe place. Compatibility: have to reiterate that this is compatible with any case that has two 5.25" drive bays, which is a lot of cases, but perhaps not some which have a tempered glass panel on the front.

I wish it had other mounting options for internal installation.

I'm using the Icy Dock MB516SP-B in a Fedora 32 (Linux) virtualization server. Overall, I am happy with it. It is solidly constructed and performs well. Installation required a case mod. The MB516SP-B fits in two 5.25 inch external drive bays. On the case that I used (Corsair Carbide Series Air 540), I had to flatten the metal tab between the 5.25 drive bays. The MB516SP-B does have a groove which might accomodate a lower profile tab, but alas, my chosen case had tabs which stuck out too much. Too be fair I've had to make similar case mods for other cases in which I've installed Supermicro mobile racks (5 drive HDD bays). I flatten these tabs by first bending them part way with an adjustable locking plier (vice grips). I then use a BIG C-clamp to flatten the tabs. It's maybe a fifteen to twenty minute job with the right tools. I'm using Samsung and Western Digital SSDs with the MB516SP-B. It's fully populated, i.e. I have 16 SSDs in it. All bays work and the SSDs mounted easily to the drive trays. One small problem is that two of the drive activity lights are kind of dim. The LEDs on the backplane appear to be bright enough; it might just be that mechanism which conducts the light to the front of the tray is not very effective on a couple of the trays. I considered deducting a star for this problem, but IMO is really only a half star deduction. You will mostly likely need a host bus adapter or RAID controller with this SSD backplane. I'm using a Broadcom HBA 9400-16i which also works well. I had problems with the set of (Cable Plus branded) SFF-8643 cables that I purchased; they simply did not work. I then purchased a set of 10Gtek branded cables which worked fine.

I am removing a star, making it 3 stars. Value = 5 Manufacturing Quality = 2.5 Over all Quality = 4 Dropped points: I spoke with manufacturer, and they told me that other customer also reported disks are not sequential. I believe this is a result of the vendor not mapping the correct cables in order. Other SAS cables result in the same layout, so it is an ICY DOCK issue. NOTE this does not impact performance, it is just a pain in the butt to map your disks, so you can run maintenance later. Also deducting points for labels, they provide plastic tabs number 1-8 & 1-8. ICY Dock makes 1 unit that holds 24 discs - but only provides numbers 1 - 8. ICY DOCK note rather than 3D print those numbers it may be easier to provide Vinyl labels. Product review: If you planning to install this into a computer system with a quick release on 5.25 bays, you will likely have issues. My install is on an HP Z6 - I had to remove the quick release handle because the securing screws for the top bay hit the ICY Dock Cage. I not deducting stars for this, but ICY you should consider an adaptor\accessory sale. The 2 bay unit works, only downside is their wiring. Also NOTE - these units are NOT capable of working with RAID cards that can BLINK\Locate drives. The only time it lights up is under disk I/O.

Perfect for SSDs ONLY! won’t even fit a basic laptop HDD

I think the pricing on this is a bit high, but given it's a very niche part that works wonderfully, I'll accept it. I'll start in reverse, and you'll see why. Cons: -Should be able to plug fan into mobo header. The built in controller is high or low, where's I think this might be better placed with a mobo fan header. -For the price a USB header/software integration to manually identify drives would be great. Pros: -Works wonderfully with no issues. -Trays seem built well. -Chassis isn't flimsy. -4 sata power and minisas was a great idea. -Drive IO indicators all work well. Overall, happy to have thrown this into a compact NAS/Compute combo server.

Per implementare i dischi nel server

Attention, Attention ! ce boitier Convient uniquement pour disques dur de 7mm d’épaisseur (soit du SSD soit SATA slim). Il ne convient pas pour la plupart des disques SAS ou SATA (plus épais). Le fournisseur refuse de remplacer et mem de le remplace. Equipe support pas très courtoise ou coopérative.

So many drives. 4 SFF connectors makes this much nicer to wire up. Comes with enough screws. Everything works.

Hi All. It is not cheap. we can buy 8 - NetApp DS2246 disk shelves which can hold 24 disks, Dual PSUs, Redundant fans and sas modules on the used market. When you pay this amount to an , enclosure not even a Nas Device, you are expecting it to be perfect but it is not the case. My unit came with well packed with no problem with the packed. Thanks to seller. How ever product itself has some things like, Updates after 1 month of use: Negatives: - Noisy fan. (Fan has a bearing sound, probably will not last for a long time) - one of the disk trays was bent. I had to use force to make it straight. - No led brightness setting. (smaller models have it) - Requires 4 separate sata power connector. It could come with one six pin power connector. - it comes with 2 sets of 1 to 8 number buttons. there are no 9-16 numbers for those disks. - you can install only the slimmest sata drives. So if the disks you will install are not slim SSD’s you are out of luck. It is better to check before purchase. Positives: - you will have 16 disk slots which fits in 2x 5,25 slots. - leds work okay. They stay steady in idle and blink during the operation. they are bright though. You may not want to me in the same room at night. - No performance degradation. - fan connector is standard 3 pin connector. I replaced the original fan with 80mm arctic silent fan i had, and now it doesn’t make any sound with better cooling.

Anfangs war ich etwas zoegerlich wegen dem Preis, aber es hat sich gelohnt - die Icy Dock ToughArmor Wechselrahmen fuehlen sich wertig an, und die Backplane funktioniert einwandfrei mit einem gebrauchten LSI 9305-16i HBA , vier guenstigen 10Gtek SFF-8643 Kabel, und TrueNAS Core (13.0-U6.1). (auf dem Foto ist oberhalb von dem Artikel noch ein anderer Wechselrahmen mit 6x SFF bays). Ein ganz kleiner Makel ist, dass zwei der untersten trays von einem Vierer-Block ein bisschen haken, wenn man sie rausziehen moechte. D.h. ich muss das Tray leicht anheben, damit es rauskommt. Stoert mich aber nicht - beim Reinschieben war bisher noch nie ein Problem. Die Disks muss man uebrigens mit vier Schrauben befestigen. Eventuell gehen auch nur zwei, das hab ich aber nicht ausprobiert (habe Bedenken, dass dann der SATA Konnektor nicht mehr so passgenau einrastet).