INTRODUCTION

   If you happen to be a designer, 3D animator, video editor or even just an enthusiast then in all likelihood not only do you need lots of space in the form of Terabytes to store all your data but you may also need a more "portable" solution which will allow you to move all that data around without much effort. That pretty much means you can't really use the drive trays of your tower to do that so you will need to either get a docking station or try and find an external enclosure capable of holding all your drives. Now the docking station may not be the most ideal solution since drives are both exposed and not really stable during transport (although you can always pack the drives separately) but its most serious drawback is that there aren't really many in the market with more than 2 drive spots. On the other hand there aren't really that many external HDD enclosures that have more than 4 drive bays and that also may be a problem for many people (although a step up compared to docking stations). Luckily a few manufacturers recognize that issue and have begun to release external HDD enclosure with more than just 4 drive bays and the latest ICY BOX IB-RD3680SU3 External RAID Enclosure by RaidSonic has room for 8.

   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-RD3680SU3 External RAID Enclosure gives you the ability to install up to eight 3.5" drives inside two trayless drive cages (4 drives each) and in turn allows you to configure them either as BIG (1/2x), RAID 0 (1/2x) or RAID 5/50/10 (2x). RaidSonic has also given it both USB 3.0 and eSATA connectivity (ideal for new and older systems) along with hot-swap support, energy-saving feature for reduced power consumption when the drives aren't accessed and two thermal controlled 80mm fans (can also be controlled manually). Unfortunately it doesn't support JBOD (Single) mode but for that specific use RaidSonic has the IB-3680SU3 which is basically the same unit minus support for BIG and RAID (we should be reviewing it shortly). So let’s see what this particular model is capable of since RAID 0 should offer quite a bit of performance increase compared to single solutions.