Portable enclosures come in all shapes and sizes, the more popular ones are for the standard 3.5 hard drives, but they are just big and bulky, so why not use a notebook 2.5 drive instead? Today for review our friends at ICY DOCK have sent us over the FireWire version of their 2.5 HDD enclosure for review. It is nice and small and I have to say this thing is built like a little tank, your hard drive and data will be safe installed in the Shuttle Disk… Read on to learn more…
ICY DOCK MB124E Shuttle Disk Aluminum 2.5" FireWire HDD Enclosure
Reviewed by: Kristofer Brozio AkA Dracos
Sponsor: ICY DOCK
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
ICY DOCK MB124E Shuttle Disk Aluminum 2.5" FireWire HDD Enclosure
Price from NewEgg at time of review: $38.99
Model: MB124E
Available Colors: Silver
Product Description:
One of the most elegantly designed externally attached storage device with light aluminum weight cooling body to be made portable. It could also be utilized as a desktop storage device for both desktops and laptops in conserving your work space. The rubberized surrounding exterior and the inner built storage drive stabilizer suspends the storage drive to avoid corruption of data when accidentally bumped into; moreover, the four rubberized foot stands keep the device sturdy and in place, providing absolute protection of your storage drive from all angles.
Suggested Applications:
Simple add-on data/media files storage to laptops/desktops in conserving work space, data file backups
Product Features:
* Host: Firewire 400
* Drive fit : 1 x 2.5" ATA 100 (not included)
* Elegant design with light weight aluminum built cooling and rubberized surrounding
* Inner storage drive suspension stabilizer in keeping data stable
* Sturdy rubberized foot stands in avoiding slips and bumps
* Includes a traveling storage pouch
Models & Specifications:
Item Number: Silver MB124E
Internal Host: Firewire 400
Drive Fit 1 x 2.5" ATA100
Transfer Rate: 400 Mb/sec.
Structure: Aluminum body w/ rubberized surrounding
Drive Cooling: Aluminum heat dispersion
LED Indication: Device Power & Drive Activity
LED Display Color: Green: Device Power ; Amber: Drive Activity
OS Requirement: Windows 98/SE/ME/XP/2000 ; Mac OS 9.0 or higher
Dimension (LxWxH): 198.0 x 148.0 x 42.0 mm
Weight: 1.50 lbs
A Better Look at Things
:
Like any review the first thing we look at is the packaging, the packaging is after all the ‘first impression’ of any product. The packaging for the Shuttle Disk is actually pretty cool, an overall silver color; It gives it that industrial look and feel. The front of the box just has some basic info along with a nice picture of the Shuttle Disk.
The back of the box features the same picture as the front but with a lot more information.
Opening the box we find the Shuttle Disk packaged very well in a compartmentalized plastic housing.
Getting everything out we can see ICY DOCK included a user manual, FireWire cable, carrying pouch, AC adapter, European adapter, screws and the Shuttle Disk itself.
The AC adapter is kinda cool as the prongs of it collapse for travel, I already mentioned the European travel adapter, but it just slides on right over the standard prongs, I am assuming that it is auto switching as I don’t see any switch for voltages.
A Better Look at Things
Continued:
The Shuttle Disk enclosure itself is rather large compared to a 2.5 notebook hard drive, in the next section, Installation, you will find out that inside is some special features to protect your drive. On the front of the Shuttle Disk is a small window, in this window are the indicator LEDs that show power on and HDD activity.
On the bottom of the Shuttle Disk we find four rubber feet that are inset with screws for installation. The sides of the Shuttle Disk are also padded with rubber.
The rear of the enclosure is where we find the FireWire 1394 port and the AC adapter connection. There is a rubber bumper there are well.
ICY DOCK included a nice soft, suede-like storage and carrying pouch to further protect the Shuttle Disk while traveling.
The Shuttle Disk is basically made out a aluminum with rubber and plastic thrown in at points inside and out for protection and installation purposes. The Shuttle Disk is actually very lightweight and feels sturdy like it will be able to protect your drive from any damage from accidents, though I won’t be running it over with my car anytime soon.
–
–
–
–
Installation, Testing and Comparison
I will be installing my 2.5 notebook hard drive in the Shuttle Disk, it is a small 5gig drive that I use for transporting data if need be. Here are a couple shots of the Shuttle Disk next to the hard drive for comparison.
Installation is fairly easy, just remove the four screws on the bottom that are inset into the rubber feet and pop the enclosure apart.
Once open we find the main board, where the hard drive sits, actually ‘floats’ inside the Shuttle Disk on rubber legs, these legs prevent damage and minimize vibrations.
The 2.5 notebook drive just slides into the IDE connection on the PCB board, then two screws are used to secure it in place from the bottom, pretty easy to install.
After the HDD is installed you need to fit it back into the rubber stand offs and close it up, all done.
Once powered up, the LEDs come on; green for power and amber for HDD activity.
For testing I used HDTach RW from SimpliSoftware, and DiskBench. To give you a nice comparison of the performance I am comparing the ICY DOCK Shuttle Disk to another 2.5 enclosure from VIZO called the Shuttle, it is a USB interface with the same exact 2.5 HDD installed. I also threw in the results for a Corsair Flash Voyager USB drive, a Maxtor SATA 3.5 hard drive and a Seagate IDE 3.5 hard drive as well.
First up HDTach RW; higher scores are better for Burst and Read, while lower is better for Random Access.
Well obviously USB 2.0 has the advantage over the FireWire connection here, with the Shuttle Disk coming in last in all but the Random Access test. Ah, well can’t win them all…
Next up for testing I used DiskBench, it is a nice free benchmark program that gives us real world results, I really like this test as it gives us the results for actual things you will do with the devices tested. For all the tests, the lower the times the better, all times are in seconds. For this test I tested the time to Create a file on the device, the time to Read a file from the device and the time to Copy a file to each device. The same drives were used for this test as well.
Well the Shuttle Disk isn’t completely last in these tests, and there is only a couple seconds difference really between the FireWire and the USB, except for Read time.
What do these tests show us? Well I personally don’t have that much experience with FireWire as I really have no use for it, as far as I am concerned FireWire is more of an Apple thing. If I had access to a Mac I would happily test the Shuttle Disk on there but I don’t so I need to use what I have on hand, if there would be any difference in speed, who knows…
One thing I can say though is that if I compared the two notebook HDD enclosures that I do have the Vizo Shuttle and the ICY DOCK Shuttle Disk, I would have to say that the ICY DOCK Shuttle Disk would be the one to go with to protect the hard drive and its’ data. If it is shear speed you are looking for then of course I would go with the USB interface of the Vizo, but in reality we are only talking a few seconds and if you are that pressed for time then you really need to relax a bit. On average the ICY DOCK Shuttle Disk performed admirably well, if you have an Apple then you might want to look into this enclosure, if you are a PC person, then you might be more inclined to go with the USB version of the ICY DOCK Shuttle Disk. I didn’t get the USB version for testing/review but I would be interested to see the results of those tests, the USB version of the ICY DOCK Shuttle Disk just might be the perfect 2.5 enclosure.
Summary:
Well we can see form the tests that FireWire just isn’t that great, I don’t think it is any reflection on the ICY DOCK Shuttle Disk, just on the capabilities of FireWire. Knowing that the Shuttle Disk is available in a USB version also is a good thing as we can see that USB is a much higher performance interface, and if I had a choice it would be the USB 2.0 version of the Shuttle Disk. Overall the Shuttle Disk is very well made and I can easily recommend it to anyone looking for an enclosure that will protect their 2.5 hard drive and the data stored on it, but just not the FireWire version of course.
DragonSteelMods gives the ICY DOCK MB124E Shuttle Disk Aluminum 2.5" FireWire HDD Enclosure a 4 out of 5 score.
Pros:
-Great protection for HDD and data
-Very well made
-Good looking design
-Nice extras
Cons:
-FireWire interface just not up to speed
I would llike to thank ICY DOCK for the chance to review the Shuttle Disk and for their continued support of DSM.
Be sure to keep an eye out as I will be giving this away shortly in the next site contest. Hard drive not included of course!