INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Hard disk drive docking stations are amongst the very few things that have really made things easier for me (and i bet for most of you as well) since it's a lot more convenient to just insert an disk drive in them and start working on it than opening your PC Case and installing it inside. That being said HDD docking stations are not really ment as a permanent solution since an internal SATA connection is a lot faster than eSATA and USB 2.0/3.0 altogether (and you can't really damage a drive as easy as when it's out in the open) but that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't use them for a long time if you don't really care about having the best possible transfer speeds. However that's not all and so recently we see more and more of those docking stations featuring cloning capabilities allowing pretty much anyone to clone a drive without much effort. The latest RaidSonic ICY BOX IB-120CL-U3 HDD Docking & Clone Station is such a device and we decided to take it for a ride.

 

   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.

 

   Much like with most HDD cloning devices the RaidSonic ICY BOX IB-120CL-U3 HDD Docking & Clone Station is quite compact and features two drive slots for 2.5/3.5" drives. However what makes it special is that it's amongst the very few available HDD cloners in the market currently compatible with USB 3.0 which means you can expect very good read/write speeds. Unfortunately connectivity is not something that plays any part whatsoever in the cloning ability of the unit and so as you will all see later on although the IB-120CL-U3 did finish all our cloning tests somewhat sooner than the Sandberg HDD cloner things are far from perfect in that department something which i hope gets resolved soon. So let’s proceed and see exactly how the latest ICY BOX IB-120CL-U3 HDD Docking & Clone Station by RaidSonic performs.

 

 

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the front of the box we see the usual product images, features, color selection and OS compatibility but this is the first time i see a RaidSonic box without a female figure on it.

 

 

The features of the unit are also placed at the top of the box.

 

 

Moving at the rear we once again see the features list this time however written in 8 different languages.

 

 

The entire bundle is placed inside a piece of clear plastic.

 

 

The bundle contains the ICY BOX IB-120CL-U3 HDD Docking & Clone Station, USB 3.0 cable, AC power adapter and the user’s manual.

 

 

 

THE ICY BOX IB-120CL-U3 HDD DOCKING & CLONE STATION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A compact design is always welcome on any desk and with measurements of 135mm length, 110mm depth and 55mm height the IB-120CL-U3 just couldn't be smaller. Its white color may not fit every desk out there but the aluminium surrounding does look quite good so i guess we can't have it all.

 

 

At the front we see the ICY BOX logo, power on/off LED, 4 percentage LEDs and the reset/copy buttons.

 

 

As you can see both drive slots are tagged and feature activity LEDs.

 

 

Turning the unit around we see the on/off button, AC power port and the USB 3.0 host port.

 

 

The base of the station is covered with anti-glide material.

 

 

Just like the previous docking stations the IB-120CL-U3 will also be tested with two Kingston HyperX 120GB SATA III solid state drives.

 

 

Once you plug the unit into the power socket and turn it on the on/off power LED and the two activity LEDs will light up blue.

 

 

 

Once you start the cloning procedure the percentage LEDs will gradually light up green.

 

 

 

TEST BED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TESTING METHODOLOGY

 

   Complicating things is not really our way so our testing procedure will be almost identical to how we test USB 3.0 hubs so once again we will be using Kingston HyperX 120GB SATA III SSDs with every docking station not only so we can max out the performance of our USB 3.0 controller but also to be able to perform every write test required (USB flash drives are not all capable of that). Our standard selection of benchmark suites is used here as well including the famous HD Tach RW (Long Bench 32mb Zones), HD Tune Pro (read/write -when possible- speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read/Write speeds), AIDA64 (Linear Read/Random Read), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB-read/write speeds) and finally the quite outdated yet highly reliable ATTO 2.46 (Max Read/Max Write speeds). Every test was repeated for a total of 6 times and after that the average (not peak) performance numbers were recorded into our graphs. Like always every test was performed in a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1 with every update installed up to June 8th 2012.

 

   For the cloning tests we really tried to cover almost every scenario possible and so we ended up using two identical Kingston HyperX 120GB SSDs, two Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB HDDs and two Seagate Constellation ES.2 3TB HDDs. Of course due to the very long time required to copy each drive onto the other and also since cloning is done without using a computer the tests were completed only once each and then recorded to our charts.

 

 

TEST RESULTS - AIDA 64 / ATTO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - DISK CLONING SPEED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   The ICY BOX IB-120CL-U3 is not the first USB 3.0 compatible docking station to reach our hands so we weren't really surprised with its high read/write data transfer speeds. What did surprise us however was the faster cloning of drives compared to the HDD cloner by SandBerg which we reviewed a while back. Still 7 full hours to clone a 3TB SATA III drive is not really what I’d call a success certainly not when you can clone the same drive by plugging it into a SATA port in less than half the time. Of course HDD cloners are easier to use, require almost no power at all (compared to an entire system) and you don't have to worry about something going wrong during the cloning procedure so i guess for people who are not much into digging inside their systems this is the obvious choice. Performance aside RaidSonic used good quality materials for the IB-120CL-U3 and really seems to have focused more on its design than most manufacturers of similar units.

 

   With a current price tag set at around 45Euros inside the EU you can't really go wrong with the ICY BOX IB-120CL-U3 Docking & Clone Station by RaidSonic since it combines very fast read/write speeds with disk cloning capability. Of course it's not the first time that i can't locate a product by RaidSonic inside the USA so availability seems to be the only issue with the IB-120CL-U3 something which i hope gets soon solved. Bottom line the numbers have spoken so unless you have a problem with the color combination of the ICY BOX IB-120CL-U3 Docking & Clone Station (or you happen to live inside the USA) then it comes highly recommended by us and also gets our Golden Award.

 

PROS

- Build Quality (Aluminum Exterior)
- Design
- Performance (Read/Write Speeds)
- USB 3.0
- Dual Docking Station
- Standalone Drive Cloner
- Price (For Some)

 

 

 

CONS

- Cloning Procedure Takes Long To Complete (Still Faster Than the Competition)