Introduction

Some folks have a burning need for as much storage as they can cram into a full tower case. For those folks, the standard three internal 3.5" bays is insufficient. However, even the rare six internal 3.5" bay case is insufficient, as well. However, cases larger than that can often cost a pretty penny. Instead, those folks turn to products such as IcyDock's four-in-three multi-bay backplane module, a four-in-three insert into a case's 5.25" bays which can contain and power up to four SATA hard drives. ThinkComputers has the review.

Features & Specifications

- Aluminum construction
- 80 mm ball bearing cooling fan
- Adjustable temperature alarm setting
- Four SATA 3.0 Gbps ports
- Pins for external LEDs

Packaging and First Looks

The four-in-three multi-bay backplane module arrives in a brown box with a sketch of the unit on the exterior. The packaging highlights the transfer rate (300 MB/s per drive) and hot-swap, as well as the cooling properties of aluminum and the screwless drive insertion procedure.

The module looks similar to a hard drive enclosure because it is basically a hard drive enclosure. There are four doored bays on the front, each with a release button to keep accidental snags from yanking a drive. Each bay has a pair of LEDs to indicate power and activity, as well as a fail state.

The sides of the module have screw holes which can anchor the it in place, while the rails in the side help support the module while installing it. The 80 mm cooling fan is on the rear, as is the dual 4-pin Molex connectors which power the unit and the four SATA connectors for data transfer. A diagram on the top shows the purpose of the pins and the switch beside the SATA connectors.