Icy Dock MB455SPF 5-Bay Internal SATA Drive Enclosure

**Doctor Feelgood**

The Icy Dock MB455SPF is a great choice for someone that needs more hard drive bays or hot-swap capabilities. If you have a RAID array spanning multiple drives, something like this is an excellent idea since it allows you to use as little space as possible, lets you swap out drives on the fly, and provides additional cooling to the drives. - The Review

empty1969 · Rated PG Joined: 10 Oct 2006 Posts: 1

So how many power connectors do you have to attach to the unit? Do you need all 5 or can you choose to use the 3 sata plugs or the 2 molex plugs to power the whole unit?

Empty

**Modulok** · Posted: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 10:48:58 Post Subject:

I connected all of the power connections. I assumed one is needed for each hard drive but the reason for the molex connectors is that not many power supplies come with 5 sata power connectors.

I wouldn't want to test it now since I have a raid 5 array.

Comm · Rated PG Joined: 12 Jul 2007 Posts: 1

How noisy is the fan? And what sort of temperatures are the drives running at?

**Modulok** · Posted: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:08:48 Post Subject:

With the enclosure in my server I cannot pick out that fan noise. CPU fans are about 30dBA, so it isn't louder than them.

Temps are around 40C.

rudepeople · Rated PG Joined: 25 Jan 2009 Posts: 3

**Modulok** · Posted: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:13:47 Post Subject:

More or less the fan is just for sucking hot air from the drives. I do not think there is much temperature difference between drives. I would recommend a case without a door. I used to have my server in a front door case, and when I would open it, the drives were pretty hot. Now I have my server in the Lian Li case I reviewed a few months back, and the drives are just warm.

This is the only multi-drive hot swap unit I have ever used, so I can't compare any others. I did have to replace the fan though, it got real noisy.

rudepeople · Rated PG Joined: 25 Jan 2009 Posts: 3

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:43:51 Post Subject:

Hi... You want to sponsor a review? If so, send me an e-mail at admin @ bigbruin.com

(minus the spaces and all)... Smile

rudepeople · Rated PG Joined: 25 Jan 2009 Posts: 3

awesome. I hope you will still be around when I start the project...

this whole thing will take me the better part of this year to build, when I get to the backplanes, I REALLY like the look of the iStarUSA BPs... heck the 3 and 4 drive BPs have slots for tool-less chassis!

Anyway, yes, I am interested in sponsoring two reviews... I prefer other people be my guinea pigs with things like this. When the project gets as large as mine a few hundred bucks for research and proof of concept are nothing. So when I get to that point I'll e-mail you. Expect to hear from me in a couple of months for the iStarUSA BPU-230-SA-BLUE and another six months after that for the iStarUSA BPU-350-Blue

The three drive rack is for my new Workstation, and the five drive racks (four of 'em) are for my server. I'll be providing you with one of each.

But out of curiosity... If I set you up with four of the BPU-350-Blue, could I talk you into testing them out in your Lian Li PC-A77B with as many drives as you can muster? I would LIKE to know what kind of power/heat provisions I would have to consider.

FINAL NOTE: Yes... when I build a system... I BUILD A SYSTEM!!! none of this instant gratification, instant failure garbage everyone else goes through. I research the crap out the hardware I want until I am ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE it's just going to work (with the exception of occasional out-of-box failure).