It was some time ago that we were putting our Test Bench together and we were contacted by a company called Icy Dock. As coincidence had it, Jeff Sung, Sales and Marketing Manager of Icy Dock USA, thought we might be interested in their 4 in 1 SAS/SATA Backplane RAID Cage for our new system.
Today, we find ourselves with a number of Icy Dock products that we use, however, we really hadn’t the time to speak to them to our readers and thought this might be a great opportunity.
ICY DOCK 4 IN 1 SAS/SATA HOT SWAP RAID CAGE (MB994SP-4S)
In first seeing this RAID Cage, we thought it incredible that we could fit 4 SSDs into one 5.25″ hdd slot on the front of our Test Bench. The RAID cage is fully SATA 6Gbps compatible, comes with cooling fans for those who like to push things and there are also activity lights on the front of each carriage.
We liked the cage so much, in fact that we had two add two more onto the system. As you see them from top, the first two account for testing on the P67 chip on our Gigabyte P67A-UD7 motherboard, next two with the Marvel, and the next 8 account for RAID testing with our LSI 9260 MegaRAID card as you can see with the red wires in the second shot. We have to concede that we would grab yet another Cage if we had the space but prefer the DVD burner in that remaining spot. The Cage sells for $59.99 and there is even a video at Newegg.
ICY DOCK METAL 2.5″ TO 3.5″ SAS/SATA
HDD/SSD CONVERTER (MB9821P-1S)
This conversion kit is amongst one of our favorite products, not only for its appearance, but also its build. Too often the new SSD buyer is left with the issue of trying to tackle exactly how they are going to install the laptop size SSD in a desktop environment.
One could simply tape the drive there if they wish and many do but, well for most anyway, our computer build has become a thing of pride. We use two of these conversion kits for testing of our SATA II drives, however, they are fully compatible with SATA 3. For the quality, these are a great price at $25.99
What cables are you using from you RAID controller? I have an LSI controller but my cables have power & connectivity on one female plug. My plug would not connect to the enclosure. What would I need?