The drive bays are robust, and the insertion mechanism has very little play. The individual drives can be locked using a standard key; while this prevents the drives from being removed, it isn't required for operation, making it purely a mechanical barrier to accidental removal.
All drive bays support hot swapping, so any of the drives can be exchanged during operation should the need arise. This is a crucial feature in RAID 1 and RAID 5 arrays if a drive should fail; in this case, the faulty drive can be replaced immediately while the array remains available for use. This worked well during our testing, and the required rebuild - that is, the integration of the new drive into the existing array - worked flawlessly.
Included Accessories
The unit ships with two network cables.
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.
