RaidSonic ICY BOX IB-230StU3-G 2.5" HDD Enclosure Storage   Page 1

Reviewer: RWL Staff Article Publish Date: 6/2/2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

    With 2.5 inch HDD prices getting less and less day by day it's only natural for people to prefer using portable HDDs rather than USB flash drives. Personally i always carry an 16GB USB flash drive with me on my keychain but i also have an 1TB portable USB 2.0 HDD in my car for more demanding situations which i have to say i use quite often, far more often than i thought i would at first. In any case with USB 3.0 becoming more mainstream by the day many companies have introduced their own 2.5 inch external HDD enclosures and we are here to take a look at one of them, the Icy Box IB-230StU3-G by RaidSonic.

 

 

    RaidSonic was founded in Hamburg in 1999 and in May 2004 they moved to Ahrensburg due to the need for larger warehouse space. Ever since Raidsonic has grown into one of the best known corporations around especially in the PC market not only as a result of the high quality components and materials used in their solutions but also because of their permanent improving logistic and expanded technical support.

 

 

    You may not see this in this review but since we are currently testing many USB 3.0 units we have seen quite the performance difference between them so much like eSATA solutions which vary in performance due to different controllers the same seems to apply for USB 3.0. Of course the performance figures achieved with even a standard 2.5 inch HDD enclosure such as the IB-230StU3-G are 3 to 4 times over the ones of USB 2.0. However an HDD enclosure is much more than just its performance so let's move forward and see what the latest RaidSonic offering is all about.