This case has nine 5 ¼” bays, coming with two removable hard disk drive cages for four hard drives each that takes three bays each. It also comes with a 5 ¼”-to-3 ½” adaptor installed in the third 5 ¼” bay (see Figure 13). So on its default configuration this case comes with two 5 ¼” bays, one external 3 ½” bay and eight internal 3 ½” bays, allowing you to install up to two optical drives, one floppy disk drive and up to eight or nine (if you don’t install a floppy disk drive in the adaptor) hard disk drives.
This configuration can be change, obviously. You can simply remove the floppy disk drive adaptor to gain one extra 5 ¼” bay if you don’t have this obsolete storage device. If you need more 5 ¼” bays you can remove one of the hard disk drive cages to gain three more 5 ¼” bays. To remove the cages you need to first remove the plastic front panel from the case. Each cage is fastened to the chassis using two screws, one at each side of the case.
The cages come installed in the lower 5 ¼” bays but nothing prevents you from installing them in different bays. For example, for some reason you may want install your hard disk drives on the top of the case instead of the bottom, and this can be accomplished by moving the hard disk cage to the top three 5 ¼” bays. You will need, however, to remove the plastic rails for optical drives on the top three bays, a task that isn’t as easy as it seems.
In front of each cage there is one 120-mm fan, which glows blue when turned on. Note that these fans aren’t permanently attached to the hard disk drive cages, so they can be easily removed if you want to get rid of them.
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Figure 14: The two hard disk drive cages.
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Figure 15: One of the cages removed from the case.
All bays use truly screwless mechanisms. As you can see on Figure 15, each hard disk drive bay has two rails for installing hard disk drives. Just remove these rails, put them on the hard drive and then slide the hard drive into the bay, see Figures 16, 17 and 18.
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Figure 16: Hard disk drive with the two screwless rails installed.
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Figure 17: Sliding the hard disk drive into an internal 3 ½” bay.
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Figure 18: Hard disk drive installed.
