Hard drive racks are something that many people associate with servers or primarily business related applications, but they're much more useful than most people know. Personally I've used an HDD racks for a few years now as I like the ability to swap my hard drives out as need be. At this point in time I'm so accustomed to using them, I couldn't live without one. In my setup I use the rack for my operating system drive, I've got separate HDDs with Windows 7, Vista, Xp and Linux on them, to use a different operating system I just swap the hard drives out to whichever I need to access or use. This makes my life easy, and it keeps everything separate for me. It works basically like a cartridge, pop it out then pop the new one in, simple and easy and I'm ready to go. The one I've got doesn't use a tray as like most others do, all you do is stick the hard drive in and you're done, which in itself is very nice, no extra trays to buy for all of your HDDs, no worry about losing screws for the trays etc, overall it's just an excellent feature not having to use the tray.

Today for review I've got the Thermaltake Max4 3.5" SATA HDD Rack which is the kind of rack that I prefer, it does not use a tray, all you do is put the hard drive in, close the door and you're done. The Max4 isn't really fancy, no LCD display on it, no built-in cooling fan, it's basic and simple, which is nice as you don't have to worry about parts breaking down or failing on you. Though since it doesn't have a fan one might worry about its ability to keep your hard drive cool, you don't have to, I've found that it works just as well as a rack that does have a fan built in. Read on to learn more about an excellent choice for an HDD rack that's simple and easy to use...

Product Name: Thermaltake Max4 3.5" SATA HDD Rack

Author: Kristofer Brozio

Sponsor: Thermaltake

Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

Max4 3.5" SATA HDD Rack

Price: $29.99

P/N: N0023SN

Features:

-Fully supports hot-swap and hot-plug

-Tool-free for easy HDD installation

-Patent Design SATA connector

-Fits in standard 5.25” drive bay

-Application for 3.5“ SATA HDD

-Durable stainless body structure

-Transfer speeds up to 3Gbps

-Security key lock

-Front panel cooling vent design

-Dual LED indicator for power and disk activity

-Unique Patented Connector

The connector is protecting Hard Disk from damage or scratches when processing hot-swap. The Certified Lab House has approved it can exceed 50,000 times insert/eject Hard Disk movements.

Guaranty the HDD working well after 50,000 hot swap cycles

Specs:

Enclosure Interface: SATA

Transfer Rate: Up to 3Gbps

HDD Compatible: SATA I / SATA II

HDD Capacity: 3.5” SATA HDD up to 2TB

OS Compatible: Windows Vista / XP / 2003 / 2000 / NT / 98 / 95 Mac 10.3 and later

Material: Stainless & Plastic

Power: 4-pin Molex Power Connector

Dimension: 184 (L) x 149 (W) x 42 (H) mm / 7.24 (L) x 5.87 (W) x 1.65 (H) in

Accessory:

-SATA & power management cable

-Security keys

Weight: 470 g

A Better Look at Things:

As usual we'll start off with the packaging, it's nicely done, simple yet informative. Inside we find the rack and its accessories packed well.

Included with the rack is an SATA cable, screws, set of keys, user manual and a Molex to SATA power cable that has a special two-pin connector on it for use with the Max4.

The Max4 rack itself is nicely made, and rather stylish looking with a silver and black colored front bezel. The bezel and backplane are plastic while the rest of the housing is metal. The rack is also an open air design, meaning that it's not built like an optical drive like most other racks are, in other words it's not closed all around.

The front features two LED lights underneath the lock, one for power and one for hard drive activity. There's also ventilation slits in the front of the door to allow for air circulation.

On the inside you'll find an ejection system in the form of a metal bar that pushes the hard drive out as you open the front door, it's a nice system that makes removing the drive that much easier.

Also on the inside you'll find the standard SATA power and data connection, but this one isn't quite standard, it's guaranteed over 50,000 swap cycles. That means you can put a hard drive in and take it out over 50,00 times before it might fail, I think that's pretty good. That's a whole lot of swapping...

Installation, Testing and Comparison:

There's not much to the installation, the Max4 3.5” Rack installs just as any 5.25” device would.

Here it is installed in my case, a Cooler Master Cosmos Black Label Edition:

You'll notice I've got another HDD rack at the top of my case that's a bit different than the Max4, that one is an IcyDock MB672SKGF rack that includes a cooling fan and a nice little LCD display. With the Max4 I was very curious as to how well it would keep my hard drive cool since it doesn't have a fan built into it, so I checked the temperatures of each drive and surprisingly they were the same. Now they are two different drives, one is a Samsung and the other I stuck in there was a Hitachi, so there's bound to be differences in the temperature sensors, but still they should be fairly accurate. Having the same reading for both is rather interesting, it shows that either the sensors are off or that the Thermaltake with no fan cools just as well as the IcyDock that does have a fan. Even if they both were a couple degrees off in accuracy, they would still be close in temperature really so that just goes to show that the Max4 works well.

I think the main reason it cools well is that the Max4 rack features an open air design, while the IcyDock resembles an optical drive with top, bottom and sides closed off. The open air design allows the heat to dissipate easily from the hard drive, which is of course something that you want to happen.

I do have two small complaints or gripes or maybe even improvement suggestions about the Max4.

The first would be that the key does not power the unit off, then again neither does the key with the IcyDock rack, but it would be a useful feature to have.

The second complaint would be that you must use the included power connector if you want the power/activity light to work. It's not a big deal really, but it is nice to see the light there to be reassured that the unit is powered on and working. The cable is essentially a Molex to SATA power adapter that has a shorter two pin connector that splits off of it to connect to the Max4, you have to use this adapter if you want to see the indicator light. For me, I've moved to all SATA connections in my system for the hard drives and optical drives, so I had to pull a Molex out of hiding to get this to work for me, not that big of a deal, just a minute or two of extra work.

You might wonder about speed differences between a direct SATA connection and having it connected through the rack, well, there is none.

Despite the little things, I really like this product, and it will remain in my system as a very valuable piece of equipment for me.

Summary and Comments:

The Thermaltake Max4 3.5” HDD Rack is something that I can easily recommend to most anyone that utilizes multiple hard drives in their PC systems.

Even if you're not using it for business as I do, it makes life much easier when using multiple hard drives, you don't have install hard drives in your system if you don't want them in there running all of the time. For my uses it makes a lot of sense to have one of these in my system, but even for the average person you could use it with a couple drives for extra storage or even a backup drive. You can pop the drive in, perform your backup then put the drive away for safe keeping.

It also works very well for transporting large amounts of data around as well, I use these in conjunction with hard drive enclosures, it's much faster to transfer the data via SATA than it is via USB. Sure you could argue about just using eSATA, but not all computers are equipped with eSATA connections after all. After the data is transferred, just put the drive in the enclosure and take it where you need to go, at least half of your transfer will be much faster...

DragonSteelMods gives the Thermaltake Max4 3.5" SATA HDD Rack 4.5 out of 5 score and our Recommended Award as well.

Pros:

+Keeps drive cool

+Very easy to use

+Works perfectly

+Well made

+Keyed lock for security

Cons:

-Key does not power off

-Must use included connector for indicator lights

I would like to thank Thermaltake for the chance to review the Max4 3.5” HDD Rack and for their continued support of DSM.

review# 604

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