14 DAY TRIAL // The latest product that Icy Dock has officially introduced is one of the more uncanny uses of the 5.25-inch bays that all PC cases possess. Called FatCage MB155SP-B, it holds hard disk drives (HDDs) instead of optical disk drives (ODD).
It's not just a drive cage though. Well, it is, but there's nothing simple about it really. Instead of acting as a glorified 3.5-inch tray set, it configures the installed drives into RAID.
That way, the operating system installed on the PC can view all of the storage devices as a single partition instead of five.
It is a good way to make storage faster. RAID “merges” capacity and sacrifices a percentage of the total in order to increase performance and security.
MB155SP-B occupies three 5.25-inch bays and, thanks to its hot swap support, can allow owners to pull out drives at any time, without having to turn off the system.
The interchangeable EZ-Tray tray design even shuts off most vents but adds larger ventilation slots on the backplane PCB.
Of course, the five drives can't work without energy, so Icy Dock made sure to include three SATA 15-pin power ports.
Individual LEDs are also present, as is a large modularized rear outtake cooling fan of 92mm diameter, Active Power Technology (APT, only powers the fan if at least one drive is installed), a 3 Mode Fan Speed Jumper – high / low / off (100%, 60%, 0%).
Everything, except the fan of course, is housed inside a full metal body that helps cool things down by acting as a substitute heatsink.
“The MB155SP-B built to be a lighter module, while more importantly maintaining the same level of quality, build, and service you'd expect from an Icy Dock product. While the design has gone through some changes, the space saving design is still established. The backplane module allows up to a massive 5 x 3.5" SATA III hard drives, while only consuming three 5.25" bays,” the company explains.
