In Win Ironclad Case Review

The Disk Drive Bays

This case has five external 5.25” bays and six internal 3.5” bays for hard disk drives, all using a screwless installation mechanism based on rulers that need to be installed on the sides of each drive. The installation is simple: just add two rulers to the drive you want to install (see Figure 18) and then slide it in the bay you want to use. The hard disk drive bays are rotated 90° in comparison to the 5.25” bays, which certainly helps installing drives there.

Figure 16: Disk drive bays.

Figure 17: Rulers from the screwless mechanism.

Figure 18: Installing rulers on a hard drive.

Ironclad also comes with a 5.25”-to-3.5” adapter, allowing you to install a 3.5” external device like floppy disk drive or memory card reader to any 5.25” bay. This adapter supports also the installation of a hard disk drive on it (it has the appropriate holes), so you can have up to seven hard drives installed if this adapter is used.

Another advantage of Ironclad over Maelstrom is that this new case comes with a 3.5”-to-2.5” adapter, allowing you to install an SSD or laptop hard drive on any hard disk drive bay.

Figure 19: SSD adapter.