INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Nowadays most people own quite large digital media collections and that is the main reason behind the need we have for large capacity hard disk drives (aside for backup purposes always).However single external HDDs are not really the solution to that since they do take quite a bit of space and if you get more than just one you will also have to use more than just one connection port (if you want to have access to all of them at the same time). External docking stations do work well and in some occasions even better than many enclosures out there but with such solutions your drives are unprotected and again most only have two docks. Now there aren't really that many external enclosures available currently out there with more than just 2 bays and the ones that are available are quite expensive for consumer use but lucky for us the market grows each day and so RaidSonic decided to release their very own ICY BOX IB-3640SU3 USB 3.0 4 bay JBOD external enclosure.

 

   RaidSonic Technology GmbH was founded in Hamburg 1999. To realize our future visions and the rising requirements, RaidSonic moved to Ahrensburg (20 min. away from Hamburg) in May 2004.The capacity of our new warehouse, our permanent improving logistic and the expanded technical support lets us look into the future very optimistically. Our vision in a constantly growing IT market is to develop products, which will become your future dreams. Our extensive product portfolio, which we distribute Europe-wide, combines all internal and external solutions for the application of mass storage, for industrial and professional applications as well as for the private sphere, too. Through our all along increasing know-how, good results in research and development and our good cooperation with our long-time customers we could achieve a dynamic growth.

 

   RaidSonic has actually manufactured 3 different ICY BOX enclosures based on the same design, the mainstream IB-3640SU3 (Single, USB 3.0, eSATA) we have here with us today, the high-end IB-RD3640SU3 (RAID 0/1/3/5/10/Single, USB 3.0, eSATA) and the professional-grade IB-RD3640SU3E2 (RAID 0/1/3/5/10/Single, USB 3.0, eSATA, FireWire 400, 2xFireWire 800). As expected the two higher end models also cost quite a bit more and so we decided to focus on the mainstream one which is also the one we think most consumers can easily afford. So the ICY BOX IB-3640SU3 is a 4x3.5" bay external enclosure with JBOD mode (4 separate drive letters) featuring both USB 3.0 (backwards compatible with USB 2.0) and eSATA connectivity. However i have to admit that the people over at RaidSonic this time over have outdone themselves and so the IB-3640SU3 is much more sophisticated than most 4 bay external enclosures out there so let's not waste time and move to the main part of this review.

 

 

 

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As usual RaidSonic ships the ICY BOX IB-3640SU3 inside a blue and white box with two product pictures at the front, the main features as small icons and the product color (it lacks however the female figure we used to see with their boxes).

 

 

The list of features is placed on both sides of the box in English and German.

 

 

The same list is also printed at the rear in 8 languages right beneath the list with the system requirements.

 

 

After opening the box we see that the IB-3640SU3 is placed between two styrofoam spacers while the rest of the bundle is placed inside a cardboard box.

 

 

The entire bundle contains the IB-3640SU3, a small screwdriver, 4 bay spacers, spacer mounting screws, quickstart guide, eSATA cable, USB 3.0 cable and the AC power adapter.

 

 

 

THE ICY BOX IB-3640SU3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If someone said that the IB-3640SU3 looks a lot like a NAS unit they'd be right largely because of the many LEDs and buttons at the front and its rather large size (215mm length, 126mm height and 166mm width).

 

 

To show just how large the 4 bay IB-3640SU3 is compared to a dual bay solution i placed it right next to the IB-NAS5520 (again by RaidSonic).

 

 

One of the things i really like with this enclosure is the large door at the front which covers all 4 drive bays.

 

 

However the various buttons and LEDs placed at the top are even more impressive. So here we see the on/off button, interface button (switch between eSATA and USB), sync button (shuts down and turns on the device same as your system) and the fan button (auto, manual 50%/75%/100%).

 

 

The ICY BOX logo is placed at the lower end of the front door.

 

 

The logo is also placed on both sides while the DC power input is placed at he right side.

 

 

As expected the rear of the unit is also black.

 

 

There's an 80mm exhaust fan placed at the rear right above the eSATA and USB 3.0 connectors.

 

 

I was surprised to see that behind the front door there was a large metal plate instead of the usual drive trays.

 

 

Well it seems that in order to mount the drives you just need to remove the door (via the two top clips) and then slide the drives in place.

 

 

Before you do that however you need to attach the front spacer on each drive as seen above (used to fill the gap between the metal plate and the drive). Now i really think that it would be far easier if RaidSonic had placed pads on the metal plate to cover that gap and keep the drives in place but this works as well.

 

 

 

TEST BED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TESTING METHODOLOGY

 

   Complicating things is not really our way so once again our testing procedure will be almost identical to the one we use with external docking stations. However since we are talking about an dual bay 3.5" external enclosure this time over we will be using one or more (depends on the mode) Seagate Constellation ES.2 3TB SATA III hard disk drives (instead of the Kingston HyperX 120GB SATA III SSDs we use with docking stations) so we can max pretty much max out the performance of the onboard controller. Our standard selection of benchmark suites is used here as well for both single and RAID 0 testing including the famous HD Tach RW (Long Bench 32mb Zones), HD Tune Pro (read/write -when possible- speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read/Write -also when possible- speeds), AIDA64 (Linear Read/Random Read), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB/1000MB read/write speeds) and finally the quite outdated yet highly reliable ATTO 2.46 (Max Read/Max Write speeds). Temps as usual were recorded using the latest version of Hard Disk Sentinel along with the sensors provided by AIDA64. Every test was repeated for a total of 6 times and after that the average (not peak) performance numbers were recorded into our graphs. As always every test was performed in a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1 with every update installed up to November 20th 2012.

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - AIDA 64 / ATTO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - TEMPERATURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   The ICY BOX IB-3640SU3 looks a lot better than most enclosures out there, has room for up to four 3.5 drives (something we rarely see) is a lot more sophisticated offering several functions others do not (Sync/Fan Modes/Manual Interface Selection), has both USB 3.0 and eSATA connectivity and it's also quite fast, especially for a enclosure offering just single (JBOD) mode. Now we will certainly also try to get the RAID versions from RaidSonic to see just what the more demanding users out there can expect from 4 drives in RAID 0/1 modes but that aside the performance of the IB-3640SU3 should be more than enough for most people. Also worth mentioning is that the installed 80mm exhaust fan may not be very quiet when spinning at 100% (easily surpassing 45dBA) but if you leave it up to the internal sensors to decide (auto) it hardly ever goes over 50% and thus it's almost inaudible.

 

   Unfortunately as many of you know RaidSonic products are rarely ever sold overseas and so the ICY BOX IB-3640SU3 (and that entire line) is currently unavailable for sale inside the USA (i can't say if that will change or not). However in the EU it currently retails for around 120Euros a price tag which is almost half of what other competing 4 bay external HDD enclosures cost right now. Of course it lacks the various RAID modes offered by it's two higher-end brothers (and thus their transfer speeds) but still the ICY BOX IB-3640SU3 is a solid device with many useful features and very good performance levels which is why it receives our Golden Award.

 

PROS

- Build Quality
- 4x3.5" Drive Bays
- USB 3.0 & eSATA Connectivity
- 80mm Exhaust Fan (Auto & Manual Mode)
- Sync Button (Turns On/Off Alongside Your System)
- Performance
- Price 

 

 

CONS

- Availability
- Fan Is Quite Loud At 100%