StarTech DRW150SATBK 3.5-Inch SATA Hot-Swap Drive Tray for 5.25-Inch Bays

Overview

The StarTech DRW150SATBK is a hot-swap drive carrier that converts a standard 5.25-inch bay into a removable, field-serviceable housing for any 3.5-inch SATA hard drive. If your workflow involves rotating drives for off-site archiving, swapping surveillance footage storage, or replacing drives in a live system without powering down, this tray delivers the mechanism to do it without custom enclosures or downtime. Built from aluminum with a black finish, it fits standard desktop towers, rackmount chassis, and DVR/NVR enclosures that expose a 5.25-inch bay. The drive transfers data at up to 6 Gbps over the native SATA interface — no protocol conversion, no throughput penalty.

Key Features

• 6 Gbps SATA III Interface: The tray passes through full SATA III bandwidth, so you are not throttled by the enclosure. For surveillance recorders writing continuous high-bitrate streams from multiple cameras, this keeps pace with modern high-capacity drives without creating a bottleneck at the bay interface.
• 25,000+ Insertion Cycle Rating: The drive connector and tray mechanism are rated for more than 25,000 insertions — roughly 68 swap cycles per day over a year before approaching the rated limit. In practice, most installations see one to a few swaps per week, meaning this tray should outlast the drives it carries by a significant margin.
• Hot-Swap Capable: Drives can be inserted or removed while the host system remains powered, which is the core reason to deploy this over a standard drive bracket. Surveillance and server environments where uptime matters — forensic video storage, always-on DVRs, tiered NAS arrays — avoid a shutdown window every time a drive needs to come out.
• 40mm Ball Bearing Fan: The integrated 40mm fan uses a ball bearing mechanism rather than sleeve bearings. Ball bearings tolerate higher ambient temperatures and maintain rated airflow over a longer service life, which matters when the tray is parked inside a chassis running 24/7 in a server closet or equipment room with limited airflow.
• Dual LED Indicators: A green power LED and a yellow activity LED give you an immediate visual status on drive state without opening a management interface. If you are running multiple bays, this makes it easy to identify which drive is actively writing during a forensic pull or a RAID rebuild.
• LP4 and SATA Power Connectors: The host side accepts both a 4-pin LP4 power connector and a 15-pin SATA power connector, covering legacy and modern power supply configurations. You do not need a power adapter if your system only provides one or the other — either connection powers the tray.
• Aluminum Construction: The aluminum housing dissipates heat more effectively than a plastic tray and adds rigidity that protects the drive during insertion. For drives storing irreplaceable surveillance footage, the mechanical stability during hot-swap events reduces the risk of connector wear causing a failed write.
• Full SATA Data and Power Passthrough: Internal drive connectors are a 7-pin SATA data port and a 15-pin SATA power port, matching standard 3.5-inch drive interfaces directly. No adapter cables, no conversion boards — the drive seats and connects in a single motion.

Integration and Compatibility

The DRW150SATBK is designed for any system with an exposed 5.25-inch drive bay and a SATA host controller. This covers a broad range of tower workstations, mid-tower and full-tower servers, desktop NVRs, and standalone DVRs that use commodity PC chassis. Because the tray uses standard SATA signaling, it is compatible with any SATA I, II, or III host controller — the 6 Gbps ceiling is set by the interface, not the tray electronics. For surveillance storage environments pairing this with a dedicated network video recorder, verify the NVR chassis exposes a usable 5.25-inch bay before ordering. The tray dimensions are 7.5 inches long, 5.8 inches wide, and 1.6 inches tall — confirm chassis bay clearance, particularly depth, before installation. At 27.6 oz, the loaded tray (with a 3.5-inch drive installed) is well within the mechanical limits of standard bay retention hardware. For buyers building a tiered storage system around hot-swap rotation, pair this with a compatible 3.5-inch SATA surveillance-grade hard drive rated for 24/7 operation to match the always-on duty cycle the carrier is designed for. Review your storage planning guide if you are sizing drive rotation schedules against camera count and retention requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What hard drive form factor and interface does the DRW150SATBK support?

A: The DRW150SATBK supports 3.5-inch SATA hard drives only. It uses a 7-pin SATA data connector and a 15-pin SATA power connector internally, and is not compatible with SAS drives or 2.5-inch drives without an additional adapter tray.

Q: What is the maximum data transfer rate through the tray?

A: The tray supports up to 6 Gbps (SATA III), matching the maximum throughput of a direct SATA connection. The enclosure introduces no throughput penalty compared to a natively installed drive.

Q: Can I install and remove drives while the host system is running?

A: Yes — the DRW150SATBK is designed for hot-swap operation, allowing drive insertion and removal without powering down the host. Your operating system and host controller must also support hot-swap for this to function correctly; the tray provides the mechanical interface, but OS-level hot-plug support is required on the host side.

Q: What power connectors does the host system need to provide?

A: The tray accepts either a 4-pin LP4 (Molex) connector or a 15-pin SATA power connector on the host side — you need only one of the two. This covers both older power supplies with LP4 headers and modern power supplies with SATA power outputs.

Q: What is the warranty on the DRW150SATBK?

A: StarTech covers the DRW150SATBK with a 2-year manufacturer warranty.

Q: What chassis bay size is required?

A: The tray installs into a standard 5.25-inch drive bay. The tray body measures 7.5 inches in length, 5.8 inches in width, and 1.6 inches in height — verify available depth in your chassis before installation.

Marty Allison

The DRW150SATBK earns its place in surveillance storage builds specifically because of that 25,000+ insertion cycle rating — when you are rotating drives weekly for off-site archiving on a multi-camera system, connector wear is a real failure mode, and most budget trays do not publish a rated cycle count at all. StarTech does, and 25,000 cycles gives you a concrete service-life number to plan around.

Technical Highlights:

• 6 Gbps Passthrough: Full SATA III bandwidth with no conversion layer means a high-capacity surveillance drive writing at 200+ MB/s won't see the tray as a ceiling — critical when the host controller is handling simultaneous write streams from multiple camera feeds.
• Ball Bearing Fan: The 40mm ball bearing fan outlasts sleeve-bearing alternatives in sustained high-temperature environments. In a rack or tower running 24/7 in a warm equipment closet, sleeve bearings fail first — ball bearings are the right call for always-on surveillance infrastructure.
• Dual Power Input: LP4 and SATA power accepted on the host side — this is a practical detail that saves an adapter purchase when deploying into older DVR chassis that still use Molex headers rather than SATA power outputs.

Deployment Considerations:

• Hot-swap requires OS and controller support on the host side — the tray handles the physical interface, but confirm your NVR or server OS recognizes drive removal events before building a rotation workflow around it.
• At 7.5 inches in length, depth clearance in compact chassis is the most common installation issue — measure available bay depth before ordering, especially in short-depth rackmount enclosures.

Best fit: forensic video storage stations and DVR/NVR builds where drives rotate on a weekly or bi-weekly schedule and downtime for drive swaps is not acceptable. The DRW150SATBK gives you a production-rated mechanism to do that without improvising with standard drive brackets.