Antec Sonata Elite Case Review

The Disk Drive Bays

This case has three external 5.25” bays and four internal 3.5” bays for hard disk drives. The installation mechanism for 5.25” devices is identical to the one used on Sonata III 500. You need to screw two rulers to each device, one on each side, and then slide the device on the bay you want to use. These rulers come attached to the bay covers. It is a nice mechanism, although not screwless.

Figure 12: 5.25” bays.

Figure 13: Bay cover with two rulers attached.

Figure 14: Optical drive with the rulers attached.

Sonata Elite comes with an adapter for you to install 3.5” devices to any 5.25” bay. This adapter can be used by external devices like floppy disk drives, or by internal devices, like hard drives. If you install a hard drive on it you will need to remove its front plastic frame, so you can cover it with the original bay cover that comes attached to the 5.25” bays. Otherwise you will end up with a 3.5” hole on your front panel.

Figure 15: 3.5”-to-5.25” adapter.