Customer Reviews

Dual Bay Sata Raid, 3.5" inches

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a pretty solid device, with good build quality and looks. However, if you are not familiar with the technologies involved, the manual may leave you a little lost. First of all, the pictures that show you how to set the dip switches in order to choose the drive configuration appear to be backwards, probably confused black with white for the on/off positions during printing. The PDF you can get from their website is little better (in color, at least), but there is still some important info missing. such as, if you are setting up this device in a RAID 1 configuration, you will need to wait a while for it to initialize the drive. up to 1 hour per 100 gigs of space (according to the website). if i hadn't looked it up online, i wouldn't have known, and would have thought my drives were incompatible or something. anyway, once you get through all the rigmarole of setup, you should be ready to go. i'm just sure that icy dock is paying for their lazy documentation with support calls.

The Icydock enclosure is extremely easy to use - pop the drives in, close the bay doors and bam, it's about ready. And that's where the fun ends.
The switches on the back are different than the ones pictured in the manual and are a bit confusing. If you happen to move one of them it reformats the hard-drives to switch to the new raid mode.

When you first start using the enclosure, the formatting takes about 1 hour per 100gb, which isn't too bad, and it reads 2gb hard drives with no problem. (please note - not all hard drives are RAID ready... especially Western Digital hard drives. Make sure your hard drive is RAID compatible before buying!)
The USB cord likes to disconnect from the enclosure as it doesn't plug very far in, so make sure to keep the enclosure somewhere it isn't likely to get jiggled at all.

The enclosure itself does a good job - the fan keeps the drives nice and cool and it is simple to use. However, mine died on the 3rd day of use. I contacted Icydock customer service and they had me do all of the normal things - test the hard drives, test the enclosure on a different computer, check for damages, etc. When all turned out normal, they stopped responding to me completely. Half way through the second week of sending them emails with no reply, I ran out of time for a refund and thus returned the enclosure to amazon.
Kudos to Amazon for their amazing return service.

I needed a large media storage to backup the movies and tv shows I have ripped to my computer. I have been using this device for a couple of months and it does exactly what I need it to do. I have it configured as one large drive connected with the eSATA connection with two 1TB hard drives. One thing I was surpised about is that the fan enclosure is mounted externally on the case; no big deal. The unit is small and quiet.I have no complaints. One step to keep in mind, when you change switch block settings for your desired configuration, make sure you press the reset button. There is no software needed as the operating system recognized the drive and it worked fine. I chose an enclosure and bought the hard drives separately, the warrenty on the hard drives is better when you buy your own.

I've been building and servicing computers for over 20 years, Macs as well. I don't own one of these, yet, for my latest system. I wanted to do a little more research before deciding which RAID box to purchase. I like the specs and reviews on this. I probably will be buying this. I wanted to give some advice, to those who have never done this before. You may think this is going to be a no brainer project, with that attitude, you're asking for trouble. The main thing you have to keep in mind, virtually all computer components are made overseas. These manuals are usually written by someone which English is not their native language, which means, it helps if you already have a good background with computers, or at the least, you know someone that can help you out if you run into problems. The next thing is always, and I mean always, before you start configuring a new piece of hardware, go to the manufacturers site and d/l the latest manual. There may be an updated one waiting for you. Motherboard manufacturers are notorious for that. Building a RAID box, let alone a RAID system, one needs more than a basic knowledge of computers, otherwise it's almost guaranteed, you will run into some trouble and get frustrated. Lastly, whatever external box you decide to get, if your computer has either eSata or firewire ports, get a box that will let you use either of them instead of USB. SATA and firewire are a lot faster than USB. ...and if your computer has both firewire 400 and firewire 800, opt for a firewire 800 box.

Firstly, I have owned this case for about 1 month. I have it running in RAID 1 with 2x 2TB Caviar Sata 3 64MB 3.5IN Green.

As some other reviews have suggested, the drive doors are very flimsy. When you open them they can be twisted in either direction, which makes the case seem a little cheap. Still, it has a sturdy feel and is heavier than it looks.

The power supply connection on the back of the unit is quite loose, meaning if you are moving the drive around it could pop out and lose power. This is minor since in most situations you won't be moving it around.

I haven't heard the fan yet (or played with the variable speed switch), so no complaints there

There was a lot of confusion at first when I setup the drives in RAID 1. Different sequences of flashing lights mean different things. Also, the purple flashing looks almost identical to the blue flashing, which means you need to get real close (i.e. within 6 inches) to figure out if the LED is green or purple.

It took about 15 hours to format 2TB drives in RAID 1, which is about on target with the 100GB=1hour estimate of the manual.

One issue I had was that after the drives were formatted (both LED's were blue) I started transferring some data and the target (secondary) drive LED started flashing purple. The manual says this means "rebuilding verifying", although it had already completed that step previously. Anyway, many hours later both LED's are blue, everything is ok and my data is safe.

This product has flaws, but in 1+ month usage I'm quite happy with it and would recommend.

Works perfectly. Gives a 2nd life to two 1 TB drives I had leftover. Set up in BIG mode. Needed some clarification from Icy DOck support on setting it up with eSATA. Tech support responded in less than two hours with details. Very professional tech guy named Brett.

Enclosure is attractive. I understand the comments about the flimsy door issue but it wasn't really a problem for me and the unit is solidly built. I agree about the LEDs being hard to read and interpret, but once its up and running it doesn't really matter. Will keep my ears open for fan noise. Right now, its quiet. I've had other brand enclosures and fan noise after a few months has always been a problem so I am prepared to get a replacement fan when needed.

We had a catastrophic failure of a hard drive at work, and it cost us a few thousand bucks to recover. We bought this drive to replace the downed drive and provide some redundancy and the ability to recover faster. The unit was very easy to set up. We simply set the switches for a RAID setup, installed the drives, and plugged it in. When we copied saved data back to the new set-up, the system was good to go, and we've not missed a beat. Our new mantra is "Two blue lights is good!"

The unit seems to be working as advertised. Hopefully, we'll never need to use the redundancy.

Works well. Using it on Mac Pro. The only problem I have with the unit is the fan noise. The fan speed must be set to lowest speed to be "quiet".

The RAID 1 controller works very well. I had a disc go bad and was able to replace it and rebuild it. ICY Dock customer service was good at helping me trouble shoot the issue. I put the replacement drive into the ICYdock and it automatically copied the data to the new drive with no problems. Highly recommended.

This quick install, fast transfer, cool running dual external hard drive enclosure can't be beat! Just turn on it's power switch and the E-Sata cable quickly shows the two drives on your computer, transfers as if they were two internal hard drives, and never gets hot. It even works with one hard drive installed, what else is there to say?