ICYCube MB561U3S-4S 4 Bay USB 3.0 eSATA External HDD Enclosure

Always needing extra storage space and having some old hard drives laying around made the choice of the ICYCube a natural selection. The whole assembly felt solid and well made with quality looks and feel. Flipping the draws out for adding the hard drives was easy, the hard drives fitted into the trays comfortably with the mounting fixing screws supplied lining up perfectly. With four drives fitted I powered up the unit the supplied USB3 cable in my USB3 port on my PC. With in seconds all four drives were on my screen and ready for work. You can assign the unit to your media server and it becomes a media source on your network. Excellent product and well recommended. One point to note when I received my ICYCube the power cable was non-uk and I had to get the correct cable for this unit. They are standard cables that can be purchased in any computer shop for little money. Most of us may well have an old cable laying around that would do the job. Check this unit out as it could be right for you.

A+++++++++

This is a great piece of kit and allows you to house upto 4 eSATA drives (non raid) I use it to provide additional storage for my Synology DSM1815+. It is very quiet and has 3 settings for the fan, Auto, High and LOW. There are two connections - 1 for USB 3.0 and the other for eSATA. It looks great and not cheap looking - has a very nice metal finish. Adding eSATA drives is simple. Overall , a nice addition to house 1 or more eSATA drives into a complete JBOD unit. Would recommend this unit without hesitation.

How simple can it be to manufacture a caddy to house a bunch of SSD's over eSATA? This box was working ok for a couple of hours, and then drives started unmounting and disappearing. I was running this through a Sonnet 6GB PCIe card on Mac OSX. This card is solid as a rock and has been used with Raid 5 and other formats connected to Sonnet enclosures.But with this IctCube enclosure I have just lost faith that my dries are safe. When I pulled a few out (following procedure) they seems rather too hot for my liking.I will be sending this back. Drives that failed to mount in this enclosure, later mounted (thank god) in the bays of the Mac Pro. So the drives are not faulty.Very p***ed off. Waste of my afternoon completely.

I bought this ICYCube because I have been using a single drive ICYDock in the past and was very pleased with the quality and functionality of these docking stations. The only issue with this unit was the DC power plug from the external mains power brick that made poor contact. This is a general problem as it seems to be very difficult to design a low cost DC power connection that provides reliable electrical contact. I ended up soldering the wires directly to the PCB and it worked flawlessly after that.So I bought the ICYCube when I needed to connect more external drives, assuming to get similar quality.The ICYCube looks nice, the housing is made from solid aluminium, so far so good. USB 3 and mains cables are included. The mains power supply is integrated in the unit so there is no need for an external power brick.The mains switch is located at a very impractical position at the rear of the device, between the mains and USB wire, difficult to access.There is a detachable FAN and a FAN switch for OFF, AUTO and ON. When the FAN is turning (ON or AUTO position) it makes a lot of noise. It would have been better just to use a low noise FAN like the Noctua NF-R8 redux 1200 for example.The HDDs are mounted in removable metal frames using 4 screws. There are two sizes of screws, one of these sizes should fit the HDD. The frames are locked into place by a handle on the front.Ok drives mounted and installed, mains cable connected en when I attempted to switch the unit on, the aluminum cover came off and revealed live mains circuits, this is -very- dangerous.It turned out that two tiny metal latching springs that keep the entire aluminum cover in place, have been bent during transport and no longer lock the aluminum cover. I repaired it by bending the latching springs back so the aluminum cover would locked securely. This is a design flaw that needs to be addressed!The drives get hot, despite cooling as the cooling slits on the front are blocked by the handles on the drive bays (little or no air flow along the HDDs).When attempting to hot swap -one- of the drives, all drives are incorrectly disconnected (drives not properly removed warning). So that doesn't work, the drives have to be unmounted one by one and then the unit has to be powered down. Now one can swap one or more drives and power back on. This is not very practical either.It takes a long time before the ICYCube is recognised by the computer (I use an iMac). There are 4 white LED indicators on the front that keep flashing for quite some time before the drives finally appear on the desktop.Sleep mode doesn't work either so the device has to be switched-off manually in order to save power.Despite all this the device is usable but I am sure there are better alternatives available.

Quality item, it was definitely worth paying a little more for. Have tried a couple of the cheaper alternatives in the past, they just don't compare to the ICYCube. Both eSATA and USB3 connectivity is fast and problem free. Quick and simple to install and change drives. A big plus is having the power supply within the case and using a standard 'kettle' lead for power.

Works amazingly! I use this for all my video editing HDDs and the hot swap is very useful when switching between client HDDs! The fan is a bit noisy and it doesnt automatically switch off after the computer shuts down, but really good and worth the money!

I've running this on a late 2015 iMac via a Kanex Thunderbolt to eSATA adapter for the past 3 months, and it works like a dream (I can't comment on connection via USB 3, as I've not tried it)I've bought (and returned) several other similar enclosures but have always ended up with corrupted data/disks, so as you can imagine, I was very wary about trying the IcyCube, but I'm glad I did... It's a perfect companion to an iMac if you need extra storage.Obviously it's not a raid device, but it's perfect for throwing in some spare disks you may have.

Es de las cosas que esperas que e den resultado y cuando llega y la tienes todas las expectativas las supera con creces. es una compra muy recomendable.

Bonsoir,que dire de plus qu'il faut l'avoir avec son macPro 2013, simple, super pratique et sans aucun soucis avec les disques dur 3.5Genial

Im Laufe des letzten Jahres habe ich mir sechs Dock's gegönnt. Vorher waren 14 einzelne 4TB-USB 3.0-Platten (und 3 Hubs) verbunden mit zwei Laptop's im Keller im Einsatz. Die hohen Temperaturen (~59°C) der Platten und das entstandene Kabel- und Netzteilgewirr war mir lästig.ICY-Dock löste meine Probleme. Von der Verarbeitung war ich positiv überrascht. Alles nötige zur Installation (USB-3.0- und eSATA-Kabel, 2,5"- und 3,5"-Schrauben) lag bei. Diese gestaltete sich auf der Dock-Seite einfacher als von mir erwartet. Das größte Problem war, die USB-Platten von ihrem alten Gehäuse zu befreien und die Daten zu übernehmen. Da ein proprietäres Format zum Einsatz kam, habe ich die Platten mit Mini-Tool Partition-Wizard neu partitionieren und formatieren müssen. Die Datentransferraten (USB 3.0) haben sich im Vergleich zu den vorigen SATA-USB-Wandlern der externen USB-Platten zum Besseren gewandelt. Die Lüfter sind hörbar und m. E. wäre ein Einsatz am Schreibtisch oder im Wohnbereich nicht sinnvoll. Allerdings betragen die Temperaturen jetzt 39-44°C und sind damit der Haltbarkeit eher zuträglich.Aktuell sind noch sieben 6TB-Platten hinzugekommen, womit sich die Gesamtkapazität auf 98TB erhöht hat. Als Software kommen Win8, StableBit DrivePool und SnapRAID zum Einsatz. Der Stromverbrauch mit vier installierten 4TB-Platten beträgt bei mir 32 W pro Dock. Die Platten einzeln im Original-Gehäuse haben 7 W gezogen. Das ergäbe bei vier Platten 28 W, jedoch ohne Lüfter und Hub. Drei Dock's sind ständig ein und stellen 58TB zur Verfügung. Zusammen mit dem Server entstehen somit weniger als 300,- € Stromkosten pro Jahr. Der Rest dient als Backup und Datensicherung und wird nur für zwei Stunden pro Woche aktiviert.

Die Box läuft bei mir mit 4 Platten im Dauerbetrieb seit gut 1.5 Jahren und es gibt absolut keine Probleme!Es bestand die Sorge, dass das USB nicht zuverlässig funktioniert. Tut es aber wohl. Ich habe daher absolut nichts an der Box auszusetzen. Sie hängt an einem Barebone mit Linux. Auf drei der vier Platten ist ein mdraid Level 5 mit btrfs und es tut alles wunderbar -- auch das Power-Down der Platten nach 15min Inaktivität.An der Performance kann ich nichts aussetzen. Es handelt sich um HDDs, daher kann ich die USB3.0 Kapazität nicht ausreizen. Aber ~125MB/s aufs RAID schreiben funktioniert tadellos.Kaufempfehlung!

Este raíd tiene buena presencia y lleva el alimentador integrado! Esto parece tontería per es súper comodo. Perfecto con Mac OS x