PASOW2 Pack 2.5" to 3.5" SSD HDD Hard Disk Drive Bays Holder Metal Mounting Bracket Adapter for PC (Bracket)

Very good item.

One often hears that "you get what you pay for" and this is true in the case. I wanted a "no frills", easy and effective way to hold my new 2.5 inch SSD in a 3.5 inch computer case drive caddy. That's exactly what I got at a really good price. The box came the next day, had two adapter caddies in it and had eight screws for each caddy (four for the drive to adapter caddy connection and four for the adapter to my computer case drive caddy adaptive connection. The provided adapter caddies were pre-drilled and tapped where necessary. The screws took a number 2 Phillips screw driver, which gave a better effective surface to apply torque than a #0 or a #1 would have. Additionally, virtually all of the other screws in the motherboard area (MB Mounting Screws, Expansion Slot Cover Screws, HDD Drive Mounting Screws, etc.) take the #2, so it is always right there on one's work bench. Using that size screw driver on a small screw will not befuddle the experienced computer tinkerer. I lined up the SSD (A Crucial 500 GB) on the adapter and easily started the first screw (using a magnetized screw driver made this a snap.) Just ran it in a couple of turns, leaving it loose to facilitate starting the other three screws. Matched up beautifully with the Crucial SSD mounting holes, so after getting all four started, ran them down to just finger tight (I have never had a drive come loose, but I have had factory assembled drives require more torque than prudent to loosen them) Slipped my drive in the removable drive caddy from the generic DIY case, located the best hole match for the position I wanted and repeated my screw insertion technique described above. I have spent more time writing this up than I did installing the drive. Only one glitch in the process; I dropped one of the screws and it fell to the floor where I could not find it; then I looked inside one of my size 15 tennis shoes which were under my bench .. Voila! I was considering chastening the manufacturer for not supplying the screws with little red flags on them to make them easier to find, but I think I will go back on the inevitably ignored advice to us all: when working with small parts, set up your work area to make finding them easier when dropped, which surely they will be. I would buy these adapters again in a heart-beat. I got what I paid for; Thank You.

This review compares the pros and cons of two 2.5" drive adapters. These brackets are meant to facilitate mounting a 2.5" SSD or laptop drive in a space designed to accommodate a 3.5" desktop drive. One adapter is made by Corsair. The other is this generic, no-name bracket that is widely available from several vendors. I have purchased the same bracket from three different Amazon vendors and can confirm they are the same exact part -- right down to the misaligned side-rail holes.Actually, I tested three different adapters, but the third was simply unsuitable for purpose. The two reviewed here are the only brackets I feel are worthy of recommendation.(For the sake of brevity, I'll henceforth refer to a 2.5" drive as a SSD, though understand this includes any 2.5" laptop drive, not just SSDs.)The no-name bracket is the width of a standard 3.5" drive, with screw holes along the edges ("A" in pic 1A) so the adapter can mechanically mimic a 3.5" drive when mounting in a computer.For some inexplicable reason, the spacing of the side-rail holes is slightly off (pic 1C). The 3.5" form factor specifies holes spaced exactly 4 inches apart, but for some reason the holes on the bracket are about 1mm too far apart.When used in a regular, screw-in 3.5" drive cage, this discrepancy shouldn't matter because the holes in a screw-in cage are often slot-shaped instead of circular. This allows for a little leeway, so most people may never notice the bracket's hole spacing is wrong.If your computer case uses a Dell drive caddy, however, the spacing is a problem. The Dell caddy uses plastic pins that poke into a 3.5" drive's screw holes, and these pins are fixed at exactly 4 inches apart. They do not mate with this bracket's holes.Since the caddy pins obviated the need for threaded holes on the bracket, my remedy was to simply drill out the bracket's holes (with a 5/32" drill bit) to be a little larger, thereby accommodating the slightly shorter span of the caddy pins. In pic 1C, the middle hole is the original diameter, while the two outer holes have been drilled larger. Zoom in on the top rail in pic 3A to see how the caddy pins align in the enlarged holes.The Corsair's side-rail holes are properly located and required no modification.If your computer case secures 3.5" drives by screws in the bottom of the drive instead of side-rails (pic 1D), beware that the no-name bracket has no corresponding holes. You can probably drill your own holes, but note the Corsair bracket already has holes drilled and tapped.On the generic bracket the SSD mounting holes ("B" in pic 1A) are aligned to center the SSD on the adapter plate, but I drilled alternate mounting holes ("C") to offset the SSD. Pic 1B details the location of my two extra holes.The offset SSD can only be mounted with two screws, though that seems to work sufficiently enough. The SSD should not be flush to one side because there needs to be room for the mounting screws or drive caddy pins to poke through the bracket, so I positioned the "C" holes to leave a 4-5mm gap between the bracket and the side of the SSD (see pic 4A).Note Corsair already understood this, and offsets the SSD (pic 7) without requiring modification. It doesn't push it quite as close to the rail as I would like, but Corsair has the right idea. As an added bonus, the Corsair bracket supports the fitting of two SSDs in the space of a single 3.5" drive.As for how a bracket should position the SSD:ANY PLACE THIS ADAPTER WOULD BE USED IS, BY DEFINITION, A PLACE WHERE THE COMPUTER WOULD EXPECT A 3.5" DRIVE. THEREFORE, THE ADAPTER SHOULD POSITION THE SATA CONNECTORS WHERE THEY WOULD BE FOR A 3.5" DRIVE!This just seems to me intuitively obvious. I don't understand why the majority of adapters being sold want to center the smaller drive. I think any 2.5-to-3.5" adapter should shove the 2.5" drive toward the front corner of the 3.5" drive bay rather than centering it.To illustrate the problem with a centered drive, pics 3A-3B and 5A-5B show the SSD mounted in the centered position and the adapter mounted in the plastic drive caddy of a Dell desktop computer. In this particular caddy, two of the SSD mounting screws interfere with the plastic caddy (pic 3B) and can tweak it out of shape, hindering it from sliding smoothly into the drive cage inside the computer. Worse, pics 5A-5B (see lower caddy) show it will be difficult connecting the drive cables when the caddy is inserted in place, and nigh impossible if your cables have angled plugs.In contrast, pics 4A, 4B and 7 show the SSD offset-mounted in each bracket. The SATA connectors now line up with where they would be if a 3.5" drive were in the caddy.Also note that the no-name bracket's two SSD mounting screws now neatly avoid interfering with the caddy (pic 4B). Not all Dell caddies are of a similar design, so perhaps that's just a happy coincidence with this particular caddy.It should be noted the Corsair bracket has no screws on the bottom plate that could interfere with the Dell caddy.Pic 6 shows the SSD offset-mounted in my modified no-name bracket and installed in the bottom caddy. The connectors line up well -- almost exactly where they would be if a 3.5" drive was installed in the bottom caddy, and where the OEM-routed cables will expect them to be.Similarly, pic 8 shows a pair of SSDs mounted in the Corsair bracket, this time installed in the top caddy. The SATA connectors are accessible from the front edge of the caddy -- though because they're not pushed as far toward the right side-rail as I would have liked, I had to shave off part of the blue caddy to expose the left end of the connectors.Nevertheless, the Corsair bracket is worthy of 5 stars. It's almost perfect right out of the box. It should work in most scenarios, though in a few rare cases like mine one may need to slightly modify the caddy. It also has the benefit of supporting two SSDs on a single bracket.Though not suitable straight out of the box, the generic no-name bracket is very easy to modify and can be made even more perfect than the Corsair. For that, it deserves 4 stars, and is a bracket I'll continue to use and recommend.The third adapter I tested was unsuitable for my purposes. It centered the SSD, could not be modified, buried the connectors in the drive cage as though down a well, and didn't even have a proper pattern of screw holes to mimic a 3.5" drive. There are very limited scenarios where that adapter might work.Hopefully this review will help those in the market for a 2.5-to-3.5" drive adapter. Open your computer case, study your drive mounting environment, and evaluate which of the above issues are relevant to your situation.

I am using this in an In-Win BP655 case which is very small to begin with. The case has a built in rack for a DVD on top and up to 2 drives on the bottom. One of the drives can be a full 3.5 inch but the other can only be a half-height. Note: I haven't seen half height drives in more than 20 years, but I used this adapter to mount a 2.5 inch drive and it worked perfectly.The box comes with two adapters, and each adapter has 8 screws. The SSD disks are not threaded like standard hard drives, rather like DVD players i.e. the thread pitch is much finer. I have never had a computer case in which the mounting holes are threaded, rather the threading is always in the device being mounted. That said, I just used the screws that came with the adapter to mount the SSD to the adapter and then to the computer case.Note: If I were mounting this in a case like a Fractal Design, I'd probably use their screws and they provide both the fine pitch used on a device like this as well as the wider pitch used on hard drives.The only issue is that the SATA connectors for the 2.5 inch drive do not line up with the ones for the 3.5 inch drive, but I seen that in the photos in the listing and decided I can live with that, by attaching the cables ahead of time so it was not an issue. For me, this solution works great and for the price, it's a great value. I will probably pick up another set just to have for the next time.