ICY DOCK MB454SPF-B Mulit-Bay Backplane Module

Comment:
It does what it is supposed to do (with one particular exception). The manual has a Large typo. The HDD FAIL IN header (the 1 that controls the red fail leds) shows the connections to be produced on the proper side of the header.These are NO-Connects and you have to connect to the LEFT side (not the correct side like the manual shows). This header has 5v on the LEFT (not the appropriate) side and it demands to be grounded to turn on the red LED. The RocketRaid 2310 I purchased use 3.3v / gnd logic for the failed led signal. To make the two play nicely together, I had to insert a 74hc573 transparent latch involving the rocketraid 2310 and the ICYDOC. Right after adding my own IC Chip between the rocketraid board and the ICYDOC cage and correcting the ICYDOC manual -> ALL WAS Suitable WITH THE Planet.I wanted it to function "out of the box".

Comment:
Match into my Thermaltake Kandalf with ease just had to push it a tiny bit. Produced my cable management considerably superior and less complicated to deal with. Using it with 4 Several SATA drives, had to give my Raptor a small push to get it in but otherwise all the drives match in fine. Not making use of raid on any of the drives in spite of this ultimately preparing to do a raid 5 with a hardware controller card and will choose up one other dock to fit those drives in there as I think for a raid exactly where you may perhaps need to fast swap this is mandatory. Not screwless trays and obtaining difficulties exactly where a single of the activity lights is always on Orange rather of green and will go to Green when accessed. Appears like its backwards for some reason as the other people are always on green and flash orange when accessed. Drop it a star for that and the price as it is fairly highly-priced however I do believe it tends to make my system appear much better, I could of likely gone with no it. I got it to enable with some cooling difficulties and cable management which it did enhance, still I don't feel the price was completely worth it. Delighted with it but felt it shouldn't be far more than 50-60 bucks tops.

Comment:
Enables hot swapping of drives in my RAID 5 technique. Internal fans preserve drives cool. Status LED connections on unit don't match status LED connections on my RAID controller. Mounting screw holes don't line up with case. Did not honor mail-in rebate. Bought this simply because the mail in rebate made this product less costly than a competing product, but Icy Dock would not honor the rebate they advertised.

Comment:
lowest cost hotswap SATA 300 backplaneRugged construction for the objective.Nicely created tray system with ventilation slots in the front. All parts are fantastic high quality plastic or aluminum.Included fan rocks - significant air intakeInstalled and performs flawlessly with a promise TX4 controller card.Easily installed into a Pc case with screws on a single side and quickisntall program on the othersideI connected only three of the four power connectors - two common and one SATA power connector. That is the minimal requirement for SATA hot swap.Package came with all essential cables, screws, etc. Documentation is a bit inadequate but no big deal because there is no software installation and e-mail help is good. Before i bought this, I wrote to Icy Dock describing my personal computer configuration and asked concerns about what the power requirements were, if I could boot from the removable drive etc. I received a incredibly comprehensive answer from the Sales manager (no much less)that absolutely answered every single query. I am incredibly impressed with Icy dock and now with the item.Once again, thanks to NewEgg for a wonderful price tag and superb service.

Comment:
The workmanship on this is absolutely unbelievable. It fits snugly in 3 five.25" bays and delivers a constructed in fan to boot. Each drive has a devoted energy good, activity, and drive fail light. The constructed in temperature alarm has 3 settings and in itself is a neat function. The drive frames are NOT created for a rapid tricky drive swap. You nonetheless HAVE to mount the drive with six countersunk screws to the rail from the sides before sliding it in. The only advantage this gives is that you are not required to physically open the case of the machine to muck about with drives. It is nonetheless time consuming, and heaven forbid you loose some of the tiny countersunk screws The drive fail indication is truly not supplied by the enclosure but by the host controller itself. Excellent for high finish RAID cards.The "Easily replaceable fan" is effortlessly replaceable, with a module of the Precise type produced by Icy Dock. It uses a particular plastic frame with integrated contacts.

Comment:
Incredibly nice item, solidly built, i really like the retention process, and cools all four drives very effectively not genuinely a con for this item, but raid array doesnt assistance the drive failed signal so ill have a bunch of unlit lights.

Comment:
Does the job it was designed to do. Not finicky like some of the trayless selections. Active cooling with fault detection. Trays normally much less handy than newer styles. Trays sufficient, but minimally so. Mine did not incorporate baffles (only useful when not fully populated). Poor documentation: no manual readily available on the web. I was originally disappointed that the activity LEDs, even though operational, appeared to be bussed, i.e. triggered as a set. Hot-swap is of tiny use if you can't trust that you know which drive to replace in a degraded RAID array! As it turns out, all I truly needed to do was to eliminate a block of jumpers from the back. This most likely doesn't impact existing revisions: the backplane in the present item photos doesn't match mine. Still, an actual manual would have been really valuable.Given the alternatives, I would not acquire this again today.

Comment:
Hotswap wise, it fits the bill fine. The temperatue alarm and drive lights operate as advertised. The fan with fairly frankly practically worthless. The vent holes that it will pull heat from are just completely too tiny. The outcome? Right now it's 85 degrees F outdoors, most likely much less than that in my apartment. The buzzer is going off when set to 45 degree C. If your employing this in an air conditioned atmosphere (sub 70 degree F) you must in no way have a dilemma.

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4ɇ ratio of drives:bays is fantastic. The lever action on the sleds operates pretty nicely - you can retailer drives in inactive bays by just sliding them in devoid of carrying out the latch. Power/activity lights also operate with no any extra setup, which is nice. Hotswap functions with no difficulties. It required some butchering to fit into my situation (Cooler Master Centurion 5). As soon as I managed to slide it in, I noticed anything was stopping it - the fan on the back is so enormous, it was bumping into the motherboard! So the fan had to go. This of course compromised the cooling. I tried to compensate for this by under no circumstances operating a lot more than 2 out of 4 drives at a time. In the finish, I found dealing with sleds also inconvenient, and scrapped this in favor of a pair of toolless mobile racks. I don't consider I'm ever buying a backplane module of this style once more. For removable drives, toolless racks are a lot much more handy. For smallish RAIDs, I'd try to discover something with a lot greater cooling.

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For me, I was very happy with this product. It does almost everything it says it does and it doesn't break the bank. In my opinion the top quality of the ICY Dock is good when comparing to other drives in its class. The latch on the front was easy to use and following over a month of use have had not a single issue with it. Yet another plus, is that you don't will need some funky crucial on the front of the drive to turn it on or off, or unlock it to get it out. Only challenge I had was with the molex power plug getting close to the SATA connection for the drive, if you only have an L shape connector it wont perform. But most drives ship with a straight connector anyway so not actually an problem at all. For the dollars its worth it compared to other devices. It looks nice, fits nice and overall haven't had any complications employing it. Even tho this isn't actually a server realated item, nor would I evaluate it to any server merchandise in its class, we operate in a datacenter environment so we see alot of distinct sorts of hot swap drive bays and this one particular is worth the value. I would and have advised this to other people.

Comment:
Finally they redesigned the back plugins. No difficulties so far. Documentation is incomprehensible, but not needed for a easy setup (with revision "-B" you simply plug and play). The screwholes are not well aligned to the matching holes in situations (I tried with many instances) - it is achievable to repair it tightly, though. Really like this ICYDOCK technique. It's difficult to match the throughput you achive by pulling out a 750G harddrive and SATAII hotplugging it into one more machine in the subsequent area. I have 1 of these enclosures in each and every of my machines (also MB453 and MB454). The older ones with the flawed style died and had to be replaced. I just hope this will not be necessary with this one.

Comment:
Worked excellent to hold my new RAID array. Fan is a huge plus due to the fact it forces air to flow past the drives inside, allowing them to be kept cool. The multi-color LEDS on the front are genuinely neat to watch as all the drives are not always becoming accessed at the exact same time. The molex connectors on the back for power produced a actually clean install! I didnt have to run an added SATA power for every drive! Instruction manual was all in Chinese! Make positive you have some technical background or know somebody who does to get this beast installed correctly. Also, the fit was a bit snug in the drive bays. Had to fight it in, but this may have just been my case. Ahead of you get it make sure you have the space for it! It will not fit in a little tower case at all! If you power it up with out drives, it will beep very loudly, thinking they have all failed! I thought something was incorrect with my laptop or computer initially, but soon after finding it all installed, it functions fine. Also, be careful with the screws! They only give you just adequate to mount drives in all the trays and they are not regular screws!

Comment:
The MB454SPF-B does what it advertises - it lets you put four drives in three half-height drive bays. It's effortless to set up and largely every little thing just functions nicely. The fan is notably quiet. Also, the aesthetics of the face plate are comparatively very good. However, the "mostly" is a bit of a issue. The troubles areɅ) The common create high quality. It's not horrible, but neither is it some thing to write property about. For example, the drive "trays" (really, just two pieces of metal that screw to the drive and a front plate with a latch) are flimsy when compared to other manufacturer's merchandise - even other producers in the "cheap for house use" category.two) The latch release doesn't offer positive feedback - you just sort of push it up hard and wait for the latch to pop.three) Upon initial drive insertion, the side alignment flanges don't seriously self-align - you will need to get them sort-of in the right position and then wiggle the tray up and down a bit till you catch the slot.4) I was surprised to note that the screw holes don't align properly in the vertical direction. At 1st I thought it was my case, but an additional case had the exact same problem so I measured among centers and it really was the holes that were at fault. In keeping with the product review guidelines I'm not going to compare this with a different related product that Newegg also sells (as much as I'd like to). It's just worth an added search and I'm positive you'll be able to locate the much better item.I'm almost certainly going to purchase a couple of far more of these MB454SPF-B(s) mainly because, in spite of it's failings, it's the suitable size for my application Ɣ drives) and it looks a whole lot superior than anything else out there after it's installed - no will need to cover it up.

Comment:
It functions well, and the trays ARE created of metal -- I tested myself by sparking a 9V battery against the rails, and last I checked plastic doesn't conduct electricity. Compared to the 񘈨 hot-swap cages in my servers at operate, this factor is garbage. But then, it expenses 1ቦ the value. I just want to clear up one thing: of course the LEDs all light up at once! Any individual who really knows how a RAID setup functions knows that all of the disks in the RAID are accessed at as soon as. If you don't think that the lights can blink independently, watch them when your RAID controller initializes itself for the duration of bootup -- it will check every drive to make certain it's still there, and each drive light will blink independently of all the others.I actually have the 3-in-2 version of this, but because the units are more or less identical, my opinion works just as properly here.

Comment:
Did nicely for four drives in an Antec P180 case that had rails. Fan is a bit deep, so watch out for clearance concerns. Tried to move it to an Antec 300 case - does not fit. The Antec 300 does not have rails. Will have to uncover a substitute.

Comment:
I got this to setup in my linux server as an internal Drobo. This thing installed into my server case without any troubles, it's not too lengthy or something. It feels particularly sturdy compared to the backplane I was going to get. I don't believe I will be replacing this anytime ever. None that I can believe of. The screws that the harddrives attach to the rails with have a flat head. I would think about these becoming a pain to find if you lost them.

Comment:
I wanted to replace the CM 4-three cages I was currently utilizing in my Cooler Master 590 case. I decided to use the similar backplace as the pre-built unRaid servers. What I liked...* Clean design.* Nice size fan for cooling/less noise.* No important required to eliminate drives. As yet another commenter noted, I located it very difficult to install this cage. I had to use quiet a bit of force to get it in and the screws didn't actually line up either.The fan looks to be a standard 80x80mm fan, but it does not connect employing a regular plug. So if the fan starts to go you either have to have to order a replacement portion or connect the pins to prevent the fan alarm and offer energy from the MB/PSU. Most if the device is plastic and a low-cost feeling. I feel it's a small too pricey for what you get. I only ordered 1 even although I wanted to get three for consistency. Immediately after the difficult time installing I don't think I will get the other two. Maintain in mind that you can not use angle SATA cables given that they will get in the way of the molex power plugs.