CM Storm Scout Case Review

The Disk Drive Bays

This case has five external 5.25” bays and five internal 3.5” bays, as shown in Figure 13. They all use screwless mechanisms. For 5.25” devices the mechanisms are already installed on the case, while for the 3.5” internal devices you need to install two rulers, one on each side of the drive, to install them.

Figure 13: Disk drive bays.

CM Storm Scout also comes with one 5.25”-to-3.5” adapter and one adapter to allow installing 2.5” or 1.8” drives into a 3.5” bay. This is the first time we’ve seen a single adapter supporting both reduced sizes. This allows you to convert any 5.25” bay into a 3.5” bay to install a floppy disk drive or a memory card reader (the adapter comes pre-installed on the lower bay and the case comes with the appropriate bay cover) and to convert any 3.5” bay into a 2.5” or 1.8” bay to install 2.5” or 1.8” hard disk drives or solid state drives (SSDs). You need to use regular screws to install drives to these adapters, though. The good news is that CM Scout comes with a set of black thumbscrews.

If you use the 5.25”-to-3.5” adapter and has no floppy disk drive or memory card reader, you can have up to six hard disk drives installed on SM Storm Scout. The 3.5”-to-2.5" or 1.8" adapter is certainly a very nice addition.

Figure 14: No screws are necessary for installing disk drives.