Zalman GS1000 SE Case Review

The Disk Drive Bays

As mentioned, this case has four external 5.25” bays and six 3.5” bays for hard disk drives. Since this case comes with two 5.25”-to-3.5” adapters, you can install up to eight hard disk drives if no floppy disk drive or memory card reader are used.

Even though this case doesn’t have a screwless design mechanism for fastening 5.25” devices, the 5.25” bays use thumbscrews, so you won’t need tools for installing your optical drives.

Figure 16: 5.25” bays and their thumbscrews.

Figure 17: One of the two 5.25”-to-3.5” adapters.

The hard disk drive bays, however, use screwless mechanisms. Each bay is in fact a small drawer where each hard disk drive can be installed. As we already explained, on this case the hard disk drive bays are accessed from outside the case (see Figure 17). The screwless mechanism includes small shock absorbers to reduce the noise produced by the hard disk drives. The two 5.25”-to-3.5” adapters also include rubber rings for the same purpose.

Figure 18: Hard disk drive compartment.

Figure 19: Hard disk drive drawer.

GS1000 SE doesn’t come with hot-swap connectors like the original GS1000, however you can buy and install them on the hard disk drive cages, if you’d like to have this feature.