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Sharkoon Shoves Four SSDs in a 5.25-inch Drive Bay

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Sharkoon has announced a simple accessory that would make empty optical drive bays useful.

Sharkoon has introduced a rather simple but clever accessory that should put those unused optical drive bays to good use for some users. It's called the 5.25" Bay Extension that is simply a steel construct that allows users to place either two 2.5" drives and a single 3.5" drive or four 2.5" drives.

As it is intended that any 2.5" drive installed would be an SSD, those mounting holes do not have anti-vibration grommets; however, the 3.5" drives do. The bracket measures 116 x 146 x 37 mm and weighs roughly 150 grams.

Sharkoon's 5.25" Bay Extension will be available in black, red, blue and green, with no word on pricing or availability yet.

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Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers hardware news on all components and peripherals.
15 Comments Comment from the forums
  • edogawa
    Can it fly too? :P
    Reply
  • chadbry
    Im a big fan, i always have 5.25 drive bays open. and currently am out of room for hard drives!
    Reply
  • dalethepcman
    Wouldn't it have made more sense to mount the 2.5" drives two deep and two wide on the bottom, and use peg's in the middle to hold the drives in place?

    Seems like a stupid design to me...
    Reply
  • ubercake
    Good idea eliminating the need for separate drive bays in a case. If I were a case designer, I'd be working with these guys on integrating these brackets somehow into ITX and mATX cases.

    I would also look at removing standard drive bays in mid and full towers while using these in the 5.25" drive bays.

    Great front-to-back airflow anyone?!
    Reply
  • twelve25
    10672992 said:
    Wouldn't it have made more sense to mount the 2.5" drives two deep and two wide on the bottom, and use peg's in the middle to hold the drives in place?

    Seems like a stupid design to me...

    I'm thinking two drives side by side facing down and two side by side facing up, mounted with the bottom screw holes of the drive.

    Although this does also allow a 3.5" so maybe it's more intelligent than it appears at first glance.
    Reply
  • ddpruitt
    This is great except that I've seen a number of other devices like this that are hot swappable and fit up to 6 2.5" drives. I'm considering using one of these to setup a compact raid array.
    Reply
  • Rogier van der Velde
    This can actualy be done in a better way, SuperMicro offers this for a long time; search their website for: Mobile Rack M14T... it's hot swappable as well, but arguably not looking that nice
    Reply
  • dalethepcman
    10673111 said:
    I'm thinking two drives side by side facing down and two side by side facing up, mounted with the bottom screw holes of the drive.

    Although this does also allow a 3.5" so maybe it's more intelligent than it appears at first glance.

    Yes but the 3.5" drive is on the top, not the bottom, Additionally if you were using a side by side two deep approach, you could use either 6x 2.5" drives or 4x 2.5" drive + 1 3.5" drive.

    Looking at the pictures, the bottom mounted drives are very inefficient at using space.

    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    10672992 said:
    Wouldn't it have made more sense to mount the 2.5" drives two deep and two wide on the bottom, and use peg's in the middle to hold the drives in place?

    Seems like a stupid design to me...

    Yeah you'd think at least one or more of the power cables would get blocked by the drive cage which means you'd have to find some way to keep said cables from constantly getting unplugged.
    Reply
  • shadowfamicom
    I use a 3.5inch to 2.5 inch bracket and put to drives in it by twisting the SSDs on there side. This design could benefit from making the SSD's vertical instead of horizontal. I wouldn't take just on 5.25 bay but I would give much better airflow to the drives. And could possibly fit about 6 SSD's
    Reply