INTRODUCTION

   Single external 3.5" desktop drives may be extremely popular especially among casual consumers due to their somewhat affordable prices (in many cases they are even cheaper compared to what you'd have to pay to get the drive inside alone) but for professionals and really demanding users multi-bay desktop enclosures are the number one choice. This is not only because such enclosures can be used with several drives (old and new for that matter) and in a wide range of different configurations such as RAID 0/1/3/5/10/50/BIG/JBOD (model dependent) but also because they are not really that much larger compared to even single bay ones (let's face it, who likes to waste desktop space?). ICY DOCK has been in the storage enclosure market since the early 2000's with several award winning products under their belt and since some of you asked today we'll be taking a very thorough look at their Black Vortex Quad-Bay USB 3.0 & eSATA External 3.5" SATA HDD Enclosure.

   ICY DOCK is a privately held company with more than 15 years of experience in design, manufacturing, branding and distribution of Storage enclosure peripherals. By constantly improving upon its own new product release strategy, ICY DOCK has formed a standard, yet efficient, new product development procedure to ensure timely product delivery to the market. At ICY DOCK, we constantly offer state-of-the-art hard disk enclosures and removable storage kits which feature removable drive & hot swap capabilities and eSATA / SATA connectivity. We also specialize in BTO (Built to Order) branded products, OEM-branded and non-branded products for our “Tier 1” customers. Headquartered in City of Industry, California, ICY DOCK became a global peripheral enclosure provider with utilizing their manufacturing facility located in Zhang-Zang, China since 1997. Adhering to strict ISO9001 manufacturing guidelines, ICY DOCK delivers high quality standard products at a competitive price which provides our customers with an excellent opportunity to be successful in the competitive US marketplace. As one of the leading peripheral enclosure solution providers, we will continue to commit ourselves to supplying our customers with the best performance per dollar products. “Your demand is our command” is the key to ensure our success in the business world.

   Although most multi-bay external desktop enclosures in the market today offer consumers the ability to configure the mounted drives in RAID, BIG and/or JBOD the Black Vortex by ICY DOCK offers only the latter. Certainly although some people will obviously consider this as a downside the Black Vortex can actually be far more useful to people like us who just want to mount several drives inside and use each of them separately without having to worry about losing all their data or wasting crucial space for mirroring purposes. The Black Vortex however stands out not because of its USB 3.0 and eSATA connectivity (many similar models have those) but because of its open frame design (improved airflow levels) and front mounted 120mm intake LED fan which can be controlled via a 3-speed controller and is accompanied by an removable air-filter. ICY DOCK has also made it possible to turn of the build in LEDs of the fan and in case the stock fan is not quite good enough for you then you can easily replace it with pretty much any 120mm model of your choosing. The enclosure also features an easy-removable grip handle for the drives which although very easy to use unfortunately it's not of a tool-less design.