Notebook drives are becoming more and
more usable in that the speeds and capacities have picked up. People
are realizing that they can be just as good as a standard hard drive,
but have less power consumption. There was a time when you really
would never think to use a 2.5” drive in any computer besides a
portable one like a laptops, now though technology has got the point
where they can be equal tho their 3.5” counterparts, which of
course is a good thing for all concerned.

Today for review iStar has sent me over
the BPU-124V2-SS which allows you to put four 2.5” drives into the
space of one 5.25” PC bay. The setup can be used for raid, or you
can just use it as a hot swap rack to quickly and easily switch
drives and transfer data to and from places. The cage itself is very
nicely made, each bay locks individually and there’s even two 40mm
cooling fans built right in to keep things nice and cool.

Product
Name: iStar
BPU-124V2-SS Hot-Swap Backplane RAID Cage

Author: Kristofer Brozio

Sponsor: iStarUSA

Tech
Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

BPU-124V2-SS

1 x 5.25″ to 4 x 2.5″
SATA/SAS Hot-Swap Backplane RAID Cage

Features:

*
All Aluminum Material Solid Construction for Best Heat Dissipation

*
LED for Power & HDD Activity

*
Built-in 2 x 40mm Cooling Fans

*
Plug & Play, Hot Swappable

*
High Performance Transfer Rate Up to 3 Gb/s

*
Support HDD Thickness from 9.5 to 15mm

*
Support 4 x 2.5” SAS (Dual Channel) & SATA HDDs

High level Raid and high
availability storage in compact design, BPU-124V2-SS adds extra
storage and hot-swap capability to satisfy any application needs. The
BPU-124V2-SS is constructed of light weight and durable aluminum
material with 2 cooling fans to ensure best heat dissipation required
for high performance 2.5” laptop SAS/ SATA drives. It is designed
with excellent front to back vent airflow. Hard drives can also be
removed or added to the system without turning off your system power
or restarting your computer. BPU-124V2-SS is an ideal solution for
RAID and JBOD applications.

Specs:

Model Number: BPU-124V2-SS

Standard Drive Bays: 5.25″
Drive: 1

HDD Interface: 2.5” HDD SATA/
SAS

Connectors: Standard 15-pin
Power and 7-pin Data

Material: Aluminum Body

Indicators: Power On: solid
blue

HDD Access: blue blinking

Weight: 1.8 lbs

Dimension (W x H x D): 146 x 42
x 173 mm

Cooling Fan: 2x40mm

Price: $79.99 ( price from
NewEgg at time of review)

A
Better Look at Things:

iStar stuff comes in plain boxes,
and I like that, no frills, nothing fancy, it’s what inside that
counts right?

Inside you’ll find the dock
packaged well with four SATA cables, a pack of screws for
installation and a set of keys. Included also is a brief instruction
sheet, but you don’t need much really.

The dock fits into a 5.25” bay,
the outer enclosure is made of aluminum to help dissipate the heat.
There’s also several openings in it to help dissipate the heat as
well.

On the front you’ll find four
removable racks that are all keyed, they have a small switch on them
to unlock the trays.

All the trays just slide right
out:

On the back you’ll see the two
cooling fans, along with eight SATA ports and one SATA power
connection. There’s a very small switch just below the power
connection that you can use to turn the front LEDs on or off.

The black connections are just
your standard SATA ports. The yellow ports are SAS connections.

You can use the dock for a raid
setup or just your standard hot swap dock to easily pop drives in and
out for quick access.

Installation,
Testing and Comparison:

So I installed it in my case with
no issues, just a few screws and connections. I like the fact that
it uses only one SATA power connection, but of course you’ll need the
four SATA data cables and you’ll have to have four open ports.

The hard drives are easy to
install, you can install them just by sliding them through the side
of the removable rack or the top just pops off and you can put the
drive in that way. Then you’ll just need to secure it with the
included screws.

There are blue LEDs on the front
for each drive that a re solid when powered on and that blink for
activity of course.

If you don’t like the lights you
can just flip the switch on the back.

I
installed a few drives in it as one should and I tested before and
after using ATTO DiskBenchmark. The drive I used for testing is a
2.5” Seagate 7200.4 500gig 7200RPM one.

Here’s the test results:

The results are pretty much the
same, but it seems on the straight SATA interface you gain just a
little bit more write speeds, the read speeds are the same really.
That little bit won’t matter much to most people I would think.

As far as temperatures are
concerned, there was really no difference between having it in the
cage or just having it inside of my case. The fans seem quiet, and
only added just a hint of additional noise to my case.

Summary
and Comments:

The iStar BPU-124V2-SS Hot-Swap
Backplane RAID Cage is extremely well made, and it’s very easy to
use. The cage offers the ability to quickly and easily swap drives,
or create a nice raid array to add a lot of additional storage to
your system.

It’s a quick and easy way to add a
lot of storage to your system in a small space.

Speeds shouldn’t be a concern, at
least not much of one. The read speeds seem fine, but the write
speeds are a tiny bit slower when inside of the cage. Not sure why
though. It’s so little of a difference though I wouldn’t worry about
it really.

DragonSteelMods
gives the iStar
BPU-124V2-SS Hot-Swap Backplane RAID Cage a 4.5 out of 5 score.

Pros:

+Very well made

+Fans are quiet

+Easy to use

+Speeds are same

+Quick and easy raid setup

Cons:

-Write speeds appear just ever so
slightly slower in the cage

review# 672

Disclosure: This product was given to DragonSteelMods for review by the company
for review purposes only, and is not considered by us as payment for
the review, we do not, never have, and never will, accept payment
from companies to review their products.

To
learn more about our review policy, testing methods and ratings
please see this page.