A Review of the ICY DOCK Hot Swap eSATA/USB 2.0 Mobile Enclosure (MB559US-1S)
By Arthur Whalem

Image courtesy of ICY DOCK USA

ICY DOCK MB559US-1S eSATA enclosure mounts a SATA I or SATA II hard drive, which can be connected to an eSATA host adapter or a USB 2.0 connection on an Apple PowerMac or a PC. It can be used with an eSATA external host adapter like the FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4 for PowerMac G4 or G5 models with PCI slots or it could be used with a PCIe SATA host adapter with a Mac Pro or a PowerMac G5 with PCIe slots.

The USB 2.0 connection allows the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S enclosure to also be used with any Macintosh computer with a USB 2.0 port while still having the ability to perform faster when an eSATA connection is available.

If the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S eSATA enclosure is oriented vertically the power switch is on the top. Just below it is the eSATA connection and below that is the USB 2.0 port. The connection for the external power supply is next and the built in security slot is below it. The release button for the four retractable feet of the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S is located at the bottom of the rear panel.


The ICY DOCK MB559US-1S includes the enclosure, a removable drive tray, an external power adapter, a 41" eSATA cable, a 6' USB cable, an eSATA PCI mounting bracket with an 11" eSATA to SATA cable and an installation guide.

The included 11" SATA cable attached to the eSATA PCI bracket is too short and not a right angle SATA connection that is required to plug into the extra SATA ports on the Apple Mac Pro motherboard, but it should work with a PC. I was able to connect a 24" right angle SATA cable to the Apple Mac Pro motherboard and then use an Addonics AASA2SAP15C, eSATA2 - SATA converter cable to connect to the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S. The downside to using one of the extra SATA ports on the Mac Pro motherboard is that they do not support hot swap. As a result, a restart is required each time the enclosure is turned on or a new hard drive is placed in the hot swap bay. For that reason, I prefer to use the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S with an external SATA host adapter. However, the internal Mac Pro motherboard SATA ports support booting Mac OS X and no currently shipping SATA PCIe host adapter for the Mac Pro provides boot capability yet.

The ICY DOCK MB559US-1S has a white power light below the eject switch. This same light flickers when the SATA hard drive is being accessed. To eject the hard drive users simply push the gray eject switch to the right and the aluminum lever pops out so that the hard drive can be removed from the enclosure. Removing the SATA hard drive from the enclosure and the drive tray is very easy. Two screws on each side of the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S drive tray attach the 3.5" SATA hard drive to the tray.

Inserting a SATA hard drive back into the enclosure is just a matter of sliding the drive tray back into the enclosure and pushing the aluminum lever down until it snaps into place.

The four retractable feet of the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S make vertical mounting of the enclosure easy and sturdy. When the enclosure is mounted vertically it can be knocked over by pushing it more than 10 degrees to the side. If the enclosure is in an environment where it could be knocked over, I would suggest placing it on its side. To extend the feet simply push the rear bottom button on the enclosure and all four feet extend and are ready for use. If the feet are no longer needed the user can simply slide them back into the enclosure openings. This vertical mounting system allows the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S to be used with minimal space requirements and is easy to use.

The ICY DOCK MB559US-1S eSATA enclosure will work with any SATA hard drive that will function with the users SATA host adapter. The eSATA connections on the rear of the enclosure can be used with a host adapter with eSATA "type I" connections or "type L" SATA connections using the proper cable. The ICY DOCK MB559US-1S comes with an eSATA shielded cable with "type I" eSATA connectors on each end. However, the MB559US-1S enclosure could be used with a SATA host adapter that utilizes "type L" ports using an Addonics AASA2SA100C, eSATA - SATA cable.

One advantage that the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S enclosure provides is the ability to also be utilized with a USB 2.0 connection. If you are using the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S as a small portable SATA hard drive, having the ability to connect to a USB 2.0 port can provide a convenient option. Users may find that they want to share data on the SATA hard drive with an iMac, eMac, PowerBook, iBook or a Mac mini that does not have SATA capability. The USB 2.0 port provides users with an another connection option. In addition, Intel processor Macintosh owners will find that they can boot from the USB 2.0 port of the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S when using a hard drive with Mac OS X10.4.8 installed. This may come in handy should an internal Macintosh hard drive failure occur. While the USB 2.0 connection is considerably slower than a SATA connection, it is nice to have the ability to use the USB 2.0 port for interfacing with a wide variety of computers.

If you eject the SATA hard drive from the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S enclosure and look inside you will see the backplane circuit board shown below.



When the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S drive tray slides into the enclosure and locks into place the SATA hard drive is firmly connected to the backplane This same type of backplane mounting system is used in several expensive multi-bay SATA enclosures sold today. No internal SATA cables are required as the back of the circuit board provides the eSATA connection for the rear of the enclosure. The backplane system provided with the MB559US-1S allows users to hot swap SATA hard drives provided they are using a SATA host adapter that also supports hot swap. To utilize hot swap with the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S, simply dismount the SATA hard drive from the desktop, eject it from the enclosure and insert a new SATA hard drive. This all takes place while the computer and the enclosure are still powered.

According to the Kill-a-Watt electricity usage monitor, the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S power supply uses less than one watt when the enclosure is turned off but plugged in. Once the enclosure is turned on but no hard drive is inserted the enclosure uses one watt. Once a Maxline 300GB model 7V300F0 hard drive is mounted the power usage increases to 11 watts while idle. With heavy drive activity the power usage increases to 13-14 watts. The silver aluminum side panels of the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S enclosure match the Apple Mac Pro and the PowerMac G5 aluminum finish while the white front and top plastic trim sections match the white color of the white Apple iBook, iMac and Mac mini models.

The ICY DOCK MB559US-1S enclosure has no fan. The only sound you will hear from it is your SATA hard drive accessing data. It uses an external power supply that helps reduce the heat inside the enclosure. Silent enclosures are nice on the ears but they usually operate warmer than an enclosure with a cooling fan.

The cooling capability of the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S enclosure was measured with a Maxtor 300GB SATA hard drive installed. A PowerMac G5 2.0GHz Dual using Mac OS X 10.4.8 and a FirmTek SeriTek/1eVE4 PCI-X SATA host adapter was used for this test. One 4.2GB folder containing two video files was copied to the Maxtor 300GB SATA hard drive mounted inside the enclosure and constantly duplicated for 90 minutes. At the end of 90 minutes the Maxtor 300GB hard drive installed in the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S enclosure reported a temperature of 120.2 degrees Fahrenheit. The next process of the cooling test was to leave the enclosure turned on with the hard drive mounted for an hour, but with no usage other than temperature monitoring. I wanted to see how well the hard drive might cool down inside the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S enclosure. After resting for an hour, the Maxtor hard drive reported a temperature of 114.8 degrees Fahrenheit. The ambient air temperature during these tests was 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

While the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S enclosure has no fan, the aluminum side panels and the top air vents help dissipate heat away from the SATA hard drive. A fanless enclosure usually operates warmer than one with a fan and the MB559US-1S enclosure is no exception. However, the temperature readings recorded above are well within the hard drive manufacturers specifications and are lower than several other fanless enclosures that I have used.

Some users may be interested in what kind of performance the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S eSATA enclosure provides when using the SATA port versus the USB 2.0 port. A number of disk intensive functions were recorded with a Mac Pro 2.66GHz. A Maxtor 300GB model 7V300F0 SATA hard drive was mounted in the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S enclosure. Performance was compared using the same hard drive with an SATA connection using a Tempo E4P host adapter, a SATA cable from the Mac Pro 2.66GHz motherboard and a USB 2.0 connection. The SATA hard drive has 8.41GB of data on it including Mac OS X 10.4.8.

MB559US-1S Interface Speed Comparison

Mac Pro 2.66 GHz MB559US-1S test	SATA E4P	Motherboard	USB 2.0
Startup	Cannot Boot	16 seconds	33 seconds
Repair Disk Permissions	Cannot Boot	8 seconds	17 seconds
Duplicate 4.25GB	2:09 minutes	2:23 minutes	7:15 minutes
Copy 4.25GB to 4 Drive RAID	1:02 minutes	1:03 minutes	3:10 minutes
Xbench 1.3 Disk Test	118	112	18
Xbench 1.3 Mac Pro Score	190	188	84
DiskTester 2.0 10G Write/Read MB/sec.	69.6/70	66.7/69.6	17.8/24.4

As you can see in the table above, the Sonnet Tempo E4P SATA host adapter provided the fastest over all performance with the Maxline 300GB model 7V300F0 hard drive mounted inside the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S enclosure. However, it does not provide boot capability.

Using a 24" SATA cable on the Mac Pro motherboards SATA port and snaking it out the PCI slots with the Addonics AASA2SAP15C, eSATA2 - SATA converter on the end is an inexpensive way to utilize the ICY DOCK MB559US-1S SATA interface without buying a SATA host adapter. As expected, the USB 2.0 connection is twice as slow for startup and repairing disk permissions and 3x slower when duplicating or copying data. While USB 2.0 is a good connection option for Macintosh models that do not support SATA connectivity, it is certainly slower than a SATA port.

ICY DOCK MB559US-1S gets 5 AMUGs out of 5!
The ICY DOCK MB559US-1S provides an inexpensive option for mounting 3.5" SATA hard drives in an external eSATA/USB 2.0 enclosure. The direct backplane interface and the removable tray provide high quality features to this great looking aluminum SATA enclosure. This same style of enclosure is also available with FireWire 400/USB 2.0 connections. It is model MB559UEA-1S which has a MSRP of $99.99. In addition, a FireWire 800/USB 2.0 version (model MB559UEB-1S) will also be available in early 2007. If you are looking for a quiet, small, well designed, hot swap 3.5" SATA single drive enclosure, the ICY DOCK MB559 series is a good choice.

Contact Information:
ICY DOCK USA
147 Puente Ave.
City of Industry, CA 91746
Tel: 626.956.8800
Fax: 626.956.8811
http://www.icydock.com

Copyright 2006
Arizona Macintosh Users Group, Inc. (AMUG)
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