INTRODUCTION

   Continuous price drops in the storage industry have made it possible for many people to currently have at least one brand new external 2-3TB drive sitting ontop of their desks. Unfortunately not everyone can afford to get new drives all the time and so if you happen to have a couple of let’s say 1TB ones laying around chances are that you will want to make good use of them and to do so you obviously need an external HDD enclosure that can fit both. There are many available USB 3.0 compatible models in the market some of which can even hold up to 8 drives but there aren't really many that allow the owner to use the drives in anything other than single and/or BIG mode. Today on our test bench we have the latest dual bay addition in the ICY BOX line by RaidSonic, the IB-RD3662U3S External HDD RAID Enclosure.

   RaidSonic Technology GmbH was founded in Hamburg 1999. To realize our future visions and the rising requirements, RaidSonic moved to Ahrensburg (20 min. away from Hamburg) in May 2004.The capacity of our new warehouse, our permanent improving logistic and the expanded technical support lets us look into the future very optimistically. Our vision in a constantly growing IT market is to develop products, which will become your future dreams. Our extensive product portfolio, which we distribute Europe-wide, combines all internal and external solutions for the application of mass storage, for industrial and professional applications as well as for the private sphere, too. Through our all along increasing know-how, good results in research and development and our good cooperation with our long-time customers we could achieve a dynamic growth.

   The ICY BOX IB-RD3662U3S External HDD RAID Enclosure is made out of aluminum and although it may not hold many drives as some of its brothers it's very special for three very important reasons. So aside the fact that you need just to slide both drives inside to get started (trayless) it also features both USB 3.0 and eSATA connectivity which means it can cover a wider range of systems (old and new) and it also allows the user to use both drives in 4 different modes (single/JBOD, RAID0, RAID1 and BIG). RaidSonic has also equipped the IB-RD3662U3S with HDD activity LEDs and a small and rather silent 60mm fan which is used to cool both drives inside. So if you happen to be on the lookout for a feature-rich dual bay external HDD enclosure the ICY BOX IB-RD3662U3S seems to be ideal but the time has come for us to see just how well it does in terms of performance.