ICY Dock 5.25″ Hot Swap Drive Caddy for 2.5″ and 3.5″ Drive Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. ICY Dock Hot Swap Drive Caddy4. Testing Methodology and Performance5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

Today we are looking at a slightly different device from the ICY Dock line of products. The ICY Dock MB971SP-B is a hot swap drive caddy that can fit both a 3.5″ and a 2.5″ drive at the same time.

ICY Dock's reasoning for creating a product like this is more often than not people have a spare 5.25″ bay. Therefore, instead of having two docks residing on your desk (one for 3.5″ drives and one for 2.5″ drives) you have this device installed into your chassis. This gives the flexibility to use 1 x 2.5″ drive or 1 x 3.5″ drive, or both.

The advantage of having the ICY Dock Hot Swap Drive Caddy installed into the chassis is that it plugs directly into your SATA ports and doesn't use an interface such as USB 3.0 or eSATA. As such, the performance is likely to be less restricted.

As the ICY Dock MB971 features two data channels it can transfer data between both the 3.5″ drive and the 2.5″ drive at the same time, giving you (in theory) the perfect external solution.

Specifications:

• Model Number: MB971SP-B
• Color: Black
• Drive Fit:
  • 2.5″ SATA HDD or SSD x 1
  • 3.5″ SATA HDD or SSD x1
• Host Connection: 7 pin SATA port x 2
• Device Space: 5.25″ half height device bay
• Transfer Rate: Up to 6 Gbit/s. (depending on hard drive speed)
• Structure: Metal body w/ partial plastic
• Power Connector: 15pin SATA Power
• Power Indicator: Solid Green LED
• HDD Access Indicator: Flashing Amber LED

The ICY Dock caddy comes in a surprisingly small box even though it is a 5.25″ device. The design of the box is quite dark, and won't really stand out on a retail store shelf.

The back of the box lists the specifications and the key feature in several languages.

ICY Dock have chosen to not use the normal cardboard packaging inside and instead opt for a thin layer of bubble wrap.

The company have included a very thin booklet, just 6 sides long, which details how to install and use this device. Luckily, it's not at all complicated, although installation will vary slightly from case to case.

The device itself is a standard 5.25″ width design, and is more or less the same length as a DVD drive.

On the right-hand side of the device, there are two eject buttons, one each for the 3.5″ and 2.5″ drives.

Below this there are two LED indicator lights, to show both power (green) and data activity (red) for both drives.

On the left-hand side there are two power buttons, allowing you to turn on just the 3.5″ drive, or just the 2.5″ drive or both. They have aligned these buttons with the drives so it's clear to work out what they do.

ICY Dock haven't fully covered the device, and so you can see where the HDD's slide into, and how the eject mechanisms' work.

The back of the unit is very simple, and has 1 x SATA power connector and 2 x SATA data connectors. They have also added a grill so that some air can circulate around the HDD's.

The device has two layers, at the bottom there is the 2.5″ bay, and on top of this the 3.5″ bay. As such there are two sets of data and power connectors.

The bottom of the device contains another grill to aid with airflow over the HDD's.

To test this ICY Dock enclosure we will be using one of the fastest SSD's out there, the Kingston HyperX 3k 120GB drive. As such we will be able to see the full performance of the ICY Dock MB971 Drive Caddy.

As there is also a 3.5″ bay, and as this is more likely to be used with high capacity drives for offline backup and storage, we are also going to use a Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200 rpm HDD to give a more standardised performance result.

Processor: AMD Bulldozer FX 8-core 8150 CPU @ 4.2 GHz

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3
Cooler: Antec Kuhler H20 920 CPU Cooler
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 1800+ MHz
Graphics Cards: AMD Radeon 6450 HD (GPU @ 850 MHZ, Memory Clock @ 1000 MHz)
Power Supply: Akasa Venom Power 750W
Boot Drive: Kingston HyperX 3K 120 GB (OS only)

OS: Windows 7 Home Edition 64bit

Software: CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1

SSD 1 (for testing): Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB

HDD 1 (for testing): Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200 rpm

Using our Kingston HyperX 3k 120GB SSD we achieved good results, the speeds were consistently over 300 MB/s. That said, this drive can perform at over 500 MB/s so this is slower than the maximum theoretical values that we could expect to see.

The speeds through the 3.5″ bay, using a mechanical drive, are of course much slower, but these are equivalent to direct SATA connection speeds. Luckily the bandwidth bottle necking seen using one of the fastest SSD's on the market is certainly not going to affect the transfer speeds with a mechanical hard drive.

The design of the ICY Dock Hot Swap Drive Caddy is much like any other 5.25″ optical disk drive. The front of the device is simple with both power buttons being located next to each drive, so that it is obvious which is the 3.5″ power button and the 2.5″ power button.

We weren't that impressed with the eject mechanisms as they required substantial force to be applied to the button. The problem was compounded with the 2.5″ drive which required such force that the drive would shoot out a good few inches when it finally released.

We would hope the company will fine tune and enhance this eject mechanism as it is poorly implemented. Additionally, we feel the overall build quality is a little poor, for instance the 3.5″ eject button felt a little flimsy, wobbling around when touched.

The two power/activity lights are a good addition, although the top light is slightly hidden from view underneath the 3.5″ eject button unless you happen to have your chassis at desk height. This seems a slight oversight by the design team, but is not crucial to everyday operation.

The performance of the device is good, as we recorded transfer speeds of well over 300 MB/s. That said this is a SATA III certified product and should allow a maximum theoretical speed of around 500 MB/s when paired with the Kingston HyperX SSD.  When used with a quality 3.5″ mechanical drive the performance was as good as we would expect.

We verify that this device is ideal for a partnership with a larger mechanical storage drive, rather than the latest, fastest Solid State drives.

Overall, this is a very functional addition to any computer system. It allows the user to quickly and easily switch HDD's and SSD's around, and while we can't see ourselves using it for boot drives, it is brilliant for use with backup drives or even for setting up a HDD or SSD for a laptop or second computer.

Turning to price, this device will only set you back £25.92 from Amazon.co.uk.  This is certainly good value for money.

Pros

• Decent performance.
• Allows hot swapping of 3.5″ and 2.5″ drives.
• Very practical device.
• Good value for money.

Cons

• Not an ideal pairing for the latest SATA 6Gbps Solid State drives.
• Eject mechanism requires high force.
• Build quality a little questionable.

Kitguru says: It does the job with no fuss, a simple but very practical addition to a computer system.

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