Installation and Operation:
The image below provides a look inside the mobile rack, where we can see the SATA data and power connections at the back of each slot. Here we can also see more metal used to line the enclosure, as well as on the mechanism used to eject the drives. The design seems rather robust, and the use of metal on moving parts and other critical areas is a confidence building upgrade over other units that use all plastic.
Sliding drives into the
Kingwin KF-4000-BK is simple, and as they reach full insertion the door begins to close automatically. Once you have pushed the drive far enough, simply grab the door near the latch and push it close the rest of the way until you hear it click shut. The metal latch lets you know it is closed, and holds tight until you release it by pulling the tab with the "Serial ATA" logo.
In the below left image we see the rack loaded up with four Maxtor MaxLine III 250GB SATA 3Gbps drives. You couldn't ask for any easier setup thanks to the lack of trays, the smooth motion of the doors, and the secure latching mechanism. In the below right image we see the rack fitted with the tool-less drive rails from an Enermax CS-10182-BA Server Tower Chassis. Whether you have a case with tool-less rails, or tool-less clips built into the drive cage, the KF-4000-BK should work just fine.
The next set of images show the KF-4000-BK installed in the CS-10182-BA case. I wound up running with just one tool-less drive rail on each side, and everything was held together tightly anyway. The grooves in the aluminum sides of the drive rack allowed the lips in the case's drive cage to slide by with zero interference, and it popped into place securely.
When everything was said and done, making the wiring connections was the most involved portion of the setup. Putting the drives into the rack, and putting the rack into the case took no time at all. Once up and running, the rack was invisible in terms of performance, allowing the drives to operate at the same speed alone or in RAID 0+1 as if connected directly to the motherboard's headers. In terms of noise, the system isn't particularly quiet and the two 40mm fans were hard to discern. With all other system noise eliminated, the fans were audible, and in an extremely quiet system they may be unwelcome.
