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.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

A large product picture right next to a smaller one, the main features and the RaidSonic logo are placed at the front of the box.

The complete features list is printed on both sides of the box in English and German.

The same features list is also printed at the rear in 8 languages.

RaidSonic placed the IB-RD3662U3S inside a plastic bag and between two cardboard pieces.

Aside the IB-RD3662U3S enclosure inside the box you will also find a USB 3.0 cable, eSATA cable, AC power adapter, 4 rubber round feet and the user’s manual.

THE ICY BOX IB-RD3662U3S

The aluminum casing of the IB-RD3662U3S is quite compact (for a dual 3.5" drive enclosure) and measures 204mm in length, 145mm in height and 80mm in width.

To open both bays you need to release the ramps by using the buttons at the top (right beneath the HDD activity LEDs).

Since the IB-RD3662U3S has a very convenient trayless feature you just need to push the drives inside and then secure them by raising the ramps.

At the rear we see the 60mm fan, On/Off switch, USB 3.0 and eSATA ports, mode selector and the DC-IN port.

IF for any reason you'd like to swap the default fan you can do so since the fan can be easily removed as you can see from the above picture.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY 

   Complicating things is not really our way so once again our testing procedure will be almost identical to the one we use with external docking stations. However since we are talking about an dual bay 3.5" external enclosure this time over we will be using one or more (depends on the mode) Seagate Constellation ES.3 4TB SATA III hard disk drives (instead of the Kingston HyperX 120GB SATA III SSDs we use with docking stations) so we can max pretty much max out the performance of the onboard controller. Our standard selection of benchmark suites is used here as well for both single and RAID 0 testing including the famous HD Tach RW (Long Bench 32mb Zones), HD Tune Pro (read/write -when possible- speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read/Write -also when possible- speeds), AIDA64 (Linear Read/Random Read), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB/1000MB read/write speeds) and finally the quite outdated yet highly reliable ATTO 2.46 (Max Read/Max Write speeds). Temps as usual were recorded using the latest version of Hard Disk Sentinel along with the sensors provided by AIDA64. Every test was repeated for a total of 6 times and after that the average (not peak) performance numbers were recorded into our graphs. As always every test was performed in a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1 with every update installed up to May 1st 2014.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

TEST RESULTS - TEMPERATURES

CONCLUSION

   Aside the fact that we couldn't perform a couple of tests with the ICY BOX IB-RD3662U3S (I’m sure you all figured that out while reading our charts) it's clear that although not at the top of our charts it performs extremely well for a dual bay RAID enclosure. Of course as already mentioned the dual connectivity (USB 3.0 & eSATA) paired with the option to choose one of the 4 different modes (JBOD/RAID0/RAID1/BIG) and the ability to swap the rear fan with one of your choosing make the IB-RD3662U3S one of the top dual bay external enclosures to ever pass from our test bench. The trayless feature is also very convenient while the HDD activity LEDs (blue for idle and purple for access) make it very easy to see which HDD is being accessed at all times.

   RaidSonic products are always priced aggressively but unfortunately they are not available outside from the EU which means that you currently you can only get the ICY BOX IB-RD3662U3S from within the EU for a price of 78Euros (Amazon.co.uk). You can certainly find many dual bay USB 3.0 external enclosures in the market at around the same price point (some even a lot cheaper) but you can't find one with the same features. Overall i just can't find anything wrong with the ICY BOX IB-RD3662U3S External HDD RAID Enclosure and since the price is not bad for such a product we have no reason not to give it our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Performance
- USB 3.0 & eSATA Connectivity
- JBOD/RAID0/RAID1/BIG Modes
- Trayless
- Removable Cooling Fan

CONS

- Availability