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Sans Digital HDDRACK5
Design and Function
The rail system was a point of a little confusion and disappointment. The rails are designed to hold a three and a half inch drive, which seems simple enough. Rather than taking the design of rail mounts to hard drive and then rail and hard drive slide into rack, the rails are in place and the hard drive gets four turnbuckle screws that if they are screwed in too far, the rails are useless and the hard drive falls. The other issue with the rail system and the turnbuckle screws is again if the screws are just right for the rails, the quick release may not grab the turnbuckle screw and the hard drive slides out the HDDRACK5. Though the HDDRACK5 may not be designed to be moved after it is installed, with this present design even the slightest of movement may result with hard drives falling or sliding out of the rack. The testing of the HDDRACK5 was pretty simple, since the rack only provides you a medium upon which you mount the drives and power them on and off, there was no performance or benchmarking that could be done. The management of the up to five IDE or SATA drives would be handled by some other RAID card which would be inside a workstation or server and the performance would depend on what ever drives and the RAID card the user chooses.
 This view shows a close up of the rail system on the inside. As you can see there isn't even a beveled edge for the turnbuckle screw to sit in. |
 This is a look at the quick release from the outside of the rack. |
 Attaching the power power supply very simple with this open air rack system |
 With the HDDRACK5 fully populated with hard drives and a 550WATT power Supply in view, this angle provides you with a very clean look. Once the SATA cables or IDE ribbons are attached, the presentation will be all together different. |
Conclusion
Though I liked the concept of “open air” hard drive storage, the overall of the HDDRACK5 could use some rail design improvement. The 120mm fan was very quiet and did not take your finger off if you were tempted to test that out (Don’t do it though!! TWL will not take responsibility for your actions). Obviously you would not have HDDRACK5 sitting someplace where items would be sucked into the fan or cause any sort of interference to the components. Sans Digital did a pretty good job coming up with a product that is definitely an eye catcher to those who pass by. The HDDRACK5 can be purchased from Sans digital for $45.00.
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