Introduction

Today we take a closer look at an external 2.5” drive bay from ICY DOCK. A slick looking enclosure with tool less design for adding and removing SATA drives.

ICY Dock has their factories located in China, with different sales branches all over the world, including USA, Germany and Japan. They started back in 1994, setting up production lines, but it’s only since 2004 that they sold products under the ICY DOCK brand. The increased push to user-friendly products in 2007 has made their name and products stand out from the competition, with many online stores carrying their products.

For more info about ICY DOCK please visit their site here. If you’re wondering if ICY DOCK is related to the ICY BOX brand, we can safely confirm that these are two different companies, ICY DOCK is a registered brand under Cremax Technology, while Icy Box is part of the RaidMax.de line-up.

What’s a MB668

The product naming chosen by ICY DOCK is not very descriptive, leaves us guessing a bit what is exactly is. Luckily the product pages include plenty of information as to what the product is all about and what it can do.



The mobile enclosure comes in a decorative cardboard box, with a list of specs at the back. The most important area is the small sticker which defines what variation of the MB668 is inside, as there are 3 variations on the market:

MB668U-1SB: Features USB 2.0

MB668US-1SB: Features USB 2.0 and eSATA

MB668U3-1SB: Features USB 3.0

These products are made from light weight aluminum with piano black finish on outside, surprisingly fingerprints are hard to leave behind, so the device doesn’t become a dust magnet or defaced with thumbprint smudges.
We tested the USB 2.0 version, which has the following specs:

Drive Fit :1 x 2.5" SATA I & II HDD / SSD (9.5mm thickness)

Hard Drive Capacity : Up to 750GB

Drive Interface : SATA

Host Interface :USB 2.0

Transfer Rate :Up to 480 Mb/Sec.

LED Indicator : Device Power: Orange LED / Drive Activity: Blue LED

Structure : Aluminum body w/ partial plastic

Drive Cooling : Aluminum heat dispersion

Power Source : USB Bus Power / 5V DC (Optional)

Dimension (W x H x D) : 76.3 x 13 x 150 mm

Let’s take a look at the product and accessories ->

A Closer Look

Inside the box you’ll find the black MB668, a leather pouch, installation CD, USB cable and power cable.



On the CD you’ll find the One Touch Backup Software which allows you to set sync directory, restore<>backup; ability to schedule, or use the hardware OTB button located at the back of the device.

Size wise the enclosure is a bit larger than an iPhone, when placed inside the leather pouch it can be mistaken for a Smartphone:



At the back of the MB668 you have all the connections:



At the inside there’s only the SATA connector and LED light:



The HDD inside is passively cooled, for this to work some extra ventilation holes were made at the bottom, with matching cutouts on the leather pouch:



Installation, Testing Next ->

Installation & Testing

ICY DOCK their best to provide a tool less installation which allows even the most technically challenged users to successfully install a hard drive inside the MB668 enclosure.

And they succeeded nicely, installation takes less than 5 seconds and requires no tools whatsoever, swapping a new drive in/out is done a flash without any risks. We tested the MB668 with an SSD as well as 7200rpm 2.5” HDD, both were detected without issue and worked nicely, maxing out USB 2.0 transfer speed.



ICY DOCK includes a discrete LED light to indicate disk activity, it’s hidden inside the D of the “ICY DOCK” logo printed at the top of the drive:



Performance wise the device allows you to max out your USB 2.0 port, what more do you want? If we compare the read/write performance with a performance 16Gb USB stick (Corsair Voyager GT) using ATTO disk bench, we get these numbers:



Reading data from a disk inside the ICY DOCK enclosure hits the transfer limit of USB 2.0; smaller file sizes are read faster from the disk/SSD compared to the USB stick, but the difference is minimal, especially if we compare the outcome of the write tests:



Here you can see the ICY DOCK solution dominating when it comes down the raw write speeds, at small and larger files it’s noticeably faster. All in all the performance of any drive put inside the MB668 will be limited by the USB 2.0 interface, but you do get better small file performance even when compared to a high performance USB stick.

Conclusive Thoughts

The market is flooded with external storage solutions, going from USB sticks to network attached terabyte boxes. Finding a product which suites your exact needs shouldn’t be too hard with the plethora of choice out there.

A small yet important note to make regarding the MB668 (and most external 2.5” enclosures), if you use a 5400rpm or SSD drive you can get away by only using one USB connection, if however you put a 7200rpm HDD inside most likely you’ll have to use the extra power cable, thereby losing an extra USB port. ICY DOCK includes both cables with the product, user-friendly wise it would have been nice if these two cables were combined into one, making it less likely you’ll forget either one.

All the major hard drive manufacturers are offering external HDD products, so why chose a separate enclosure? Several reasons come to mind:

Easy upgrade: you can just swap out the disk inside with a larger model and you’re good to go. The MB668 supports disks up to 750Gb, for a pocket sized enclosure, that’s not too shabby.

Disaster Recovery: no matter how reliable the hard drive is you bought, in the end they all do stop working some day. Depending on the prefab enclosure they are build-into, performing any data recovery will be made more difficult. With easy access to the disk inside the MB668 it should increase your chances of data recover a tiny bit.

Price ?: Let’s compare a few 160Gb 2.5” disks + the $20 ICY DOCK MB668U-1SB to 2.5" prefab USB 2.0 external HDDs from a few manufacturers, prices are from Newegg.com:

$43 160Gb Toshiba 5400rpm + $20 = $63
$42 160Gb Seagate 7200rpm + $20 = $62
Vs
From Edge, Memore, Imation for $65

Depending on the size of the disk you plan to use, you’ll find the price to be quite competitive even when you invest in a separate enclosure like the MB668U from ICY DOCK. Sure you will be able to find some nice deals on external disks drives, but don’t forget if you upgrade a laptop drive somewhere in the house, you can reuse it as an external and portable HDD for only $20 which is hardly expensive and definitely worth considering.


Overall we’re quite impressed by this enclosure from ICY DOCK which offers care free installation and features a slick design, at a wallet-friendly $20 you can do much worse than the MB668.


ICY DOCK MB668U-1SB recommended for



Thanks for reading, until next time!

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Some extra information:

This month there's a $5 mail-in rebate for all US/Canada customers!

ICY DOCK has put much attention in offering their (potential) customers as much information as possible, below you’ll find one of many small video clips they’ve made of their products showcasing the most important features. The MB668US-1SB is the subject of the video below: