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The packaging and artwork certainly isn't going to help sell the product. An image of two drives being inserted into the chassis might have worked better for a store display environment.
Inside, the unit is shipped inside a bubblewrap pouch with a few screws for mounting into a PC case. Icy Dock also supply a user manual.
When the MB982SPR-2S is removed from the packaging we are presented with a heavy duty chassis crafted from durable metal. There is no doubt that this is made to very exacting standards. The chassis is vented on the top and front to help with airflow. The Icy Dock can accept drives with the standard 9.5mm height.
The rear of the Icy Dock is home to the controller section, which offers PM, Raid 0, Raid 1 and BIG configurations (Port Multiplier mode requires a SATA Port Multiplier card in order to see 2 drives. Without a Port Multiplier card, only 1 drive will be seen). There are standardised Sata and power connectors here also for direct connection to a motherboard.
The enclosure is really simple to use. There is a button on the back, which when pressed opens the hinged door at the top. There is a layered rack system, which can be pulled upwards to allow for two drives to be fitted on top of each other. The full enclosure is metal, but there is a thin plastic membrane to separate the drive and the delicate electronics from the metal chassis.
One of the most appealing aspects of the Icy Dock design is that you don't have to physically force the drive into the connectors within the enclosure. The hinged outside lid is connected to the mechanism which seats the drives automatically.
The video above highlights an install procedure which takes only a few seconds at most. If you pay close attention to the last section of the video you will notice that when the hinged door is closed, the mechanism inside slides the drives into locking position, connecting with the dual head sata controller at the right.
As we said earlier, the operation of the drive is extremely logical and straightforward.
To change the Raid mode, you need access to a little screwdriver which rotates a settings switch at the back. Confusingly we weren't aware that the reset button needed to be depressed during a boot up phase. While the manual fails to detail this properly the video above explains how to reset the drive to accept a new RAID configuration.
