Icy Dock MB561US-4S Quad Bay External Removable Enclosure
This is the Icy Dock MB561US-4S Quad Bay External Removable Enclosure.
During CES 2010 Dave , Chris and Jim paid a visit to the Icy Dock booth. They saw the potential of how the Icy Dock product could contribute to the Windows Home Server ecosystem. Icy Dock was pleased to help out and soon we each received a product to review.
Icy Dock MB561US-4S
The Icy Dock MB561US-4S unit has both USB and eSATA connections. It holds 4 SATA drives and supports the latest 2TB drives. It is available in a silver aluminum exterior with a white front and rear plastic panels or a completely black unit. This case is quite stylish with no screws or switches on the front for a simple clean finish.
Construction
The aluminum shell is a one piece construction with no seams and rounded corners. The quality is very sturdy and adds to reducing drive vibration and noise and helps to keep the unit cooler.
The 4 removable trays may look flimsy, but with a hard drive installed and 6 small screws to secure the drive, it is solid. There is a external plastic removable fan at the rear.
This design allows the user to remove the fan effortlessly by applying pressure to a tab located on the bottom of the fan at the center. Also you can choose to leave the fan off the unit if you have only 1 or 2 drives for a completely silent unit or leave it on if you add more drives. The power supply is also silent and internal this eliminates the need for an external power brick.
What’s included
Instruction manual, screws, USB cable, eSata cable and power cable.
Use
The trays can be removed by releasing a gray plastic tab that will allow an aluminum arm to swing out and pull to remove the tray. Remove the plastic insert with a philips screwdriver and attach a SATA hard drive with the supplied screws. Slide the tray back in and secure the drive by moving the aluminum arm back in place unit you hear a click. Plug the unit to your servers external eSATA port, plug in the power cable. Power up the unit and your done.
Using the Icy Dock with your Windows Home Server
I’ll be testing this unit on my EX470 and my EX490 HP MediaSmart Servers. The EX470/5 has an external eSATA port multiplier aware connection that can recognize a 4 bay eSATA enclosure, while the EX490/5 can recognize a 5 drive eSATA enclosure. The EX485/7 can only recognize 1 drive therefore these model will not work with the Icy Dock MB561US-4S.
Console View
These 2 views using the Disk Management addin show my 3 WHS pooled drives in the EX490 and then in the Icy Dock. You will notice that the temperatures are very similar.
eSata vs USB
I wanted to take full advantage of my HP MediaSmart server. To do that I am using the eSata connection for faster transfer speeds and to leave the 3 USB ports on the server available for other uses.
Conclusion
The primary use of the Windows Home Server Software is for PC backups. Secondary is to have a central place to store all my media and have it available throughout my network. Video libraries can grow very quickly if you want to have your content available immediately. WHS does this well. However to properly secure your precious files and a lot of work, it is wise to plan for data loss. Turning on Folder Duplication reduces your storage space by half and doing a Shares Backup also decreases your available storage of new data. This is where the Icy Dock MB561US-4S can be an invaluable and prudent product. You can very quickly double your storage capacity. You can use the speed of the eSATA connection to the Icy Dock unit to eliminate the storage space lost by enabling Folder Duplication on WHS. Or you can use the Icy Dock unit as a non pooled drive for Shares Backup and turn the unit off when not in use or remove the unit completely as an off-site disaster recovery plan.
Pro’s
You can very quickly double your storage capacity.
You can use the speed of the eSATA connections to the Icy Dock unit to eliminate the storage space lost by enabling Folder Duplication on WHS.
You can use the Icy Dock unit as a non pooled drive for Shares Backup and turn the unit off when not in use.
Remove the unit completely as an off-site disaster recovery plan.
Using the Icy Dock just to backup my shares, allowed me to be able to connect this device to my Popcorn Hour via USB and watch my videos.
Con’s
Does the price out way the advantages ?
My XBOX360 was not able to connect to this device
Product Website – http://www.icydock.com/product/mb561us-4s.html
Newegg – ICY DOCK MB561US-4SC External Enclosure
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Category: BYOB Hardware, Home Server Storage, Review, Windows Home Server
Did you mean to say will NOT work with the 485/487, I think that was what you were getting at…maybe I just read it wrong.
Good catch, thanks, fixed.
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Good review but yes the price is a bit high. I bought another brand that I would highly recommend about a year ago and it was only about $225 to $250.
Very nice write-up!
Icy is a little pricey though,……
It looks like the Xbox 360 will be getting a firmware update in the spring that will allow for USB storage so the Icy Doc (and similar devices) may work with it via USB some time in the near future:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/18/xbox-360-getti…
Maybe the folks over in Redmond listen to the pod cast and figured they better enable it
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