Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsOnly Good Where 3.5in Drives Are Mounted By SIDE Screw Holes, Good Fit & Finish, All Screws/Cables Included
Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2017
I got this set of 2 adapters to upgrade 3.5in drives to SSD. It's nicely finished and if your 3.5in mounting uses the side screws (many do but not all) this is great and provides a pretty nice mount. But there are problems in certain situations and one of these was a perfect solution and in another PC was unusable.
The big issue with these trays came in one of the PCs which mounted the 3.5in hard drives being replaced by their bottom screw holes. These adapters don't have bottom threaded holes for that type of mounting. If you look carefully at the product pictures in the product listing you can see these are missing, but that is easy enough to miss so BEWARE. If your PC only lets 3.5in drives mount by the bottom holes like the Lenovo ThinkStation tower form factor get a different adapter!
On the other hand if your PC uses side screws or a tooless plastic caddy like most Dell and some Acer desktops these will work perfectly for the most part. The little plastic side pins on those caddys fit this adapter perfectly.
One small issue I ran into with a Samsung 850 EVO and the Acer is some SATA power cable connectors may be a little thick and have a very tight fit between the bottom of the tray and the drive. The cutout for the business end of the drive should have been maybe 1/8th of an inch deeper I think.
NOTE: these will not work in hot 3.5in hot swap caddies. The SATA connector alignment does not match the location of 3.5in drives. If you are going for those look for another solution. I've not found any adapters like these that will work in those hot swap caddies so no demerits, but it could be important to know.
Here is what I like:
+ Nice fit and finish
+ The 2-pack is convenient for me
+ Has all the needed screws included
+ The 2 included SATA cables seem nicely made though I didn't need them
What I don't so much:
- No holes to accommodate 3.5in drives mounted by the bottom screw holes
- The bottom cutout to accommodate the SATA connectors could be a little deeper to prevent tight fitting connectors
For me the lack of ability to mount where the bottom screws of a 3.5in drive are required made this a 50/50 proposition on the two systems I had to upgrade. It is apparent in the pictures but as of this review it is not mentioned in the description. The tight squeeze for the SATA power connector was a small concern. I'm giving these mounts 4 stars They work very well for me with 3.5in non-hot-swap caddy's that use side screws.
Maybe I should have noticed the lack of 3.5in bottom mounting screw holes in the product photo but it was not in the written description: an important omission. Except the bottom mount application these are nice adapters and worked well on one of the two systems. I'm giving them 4 stars because I didn't see the problem in the product photo before buying..
