Tagan Icy Box JBOD Hard Drive Enclosure Review

INSTALLATION

Unlike some other enclosures which we have tested in the past, the Icy Box IB-3220 has a tool-less hardware installation process. Alright, if you want to be picky, you technically need a tool to open the door (AKA the key we talked about earlier, and if you don't know what I'm talking about...STOP SKIMMING and read the whole article!) but in reality it is not much of a tool. So for all you purists out there this enclosure is nearly tool free. OK? Great.


Anyways, being (near) tool-less definitely has its advantage and disadvantages. The great thing about it is you literally just need to open the door, slide in the hard drive and gently close the door behind it. Then you turn on the device and plug the USB cable, Windows should instantly (or as instantly as Windows is capable of) recognize it and you should be up and running. If you plan on using two hard drives (and why wouldn't you as this is a two bay device and single bay enclosures can be found for even less money) Windows will see both hard drives as separate drives and assign then their own separate drive letters. This is the total hard drive installation process from start to finish. Pretty simple isn't it?


The downside to this Speedy Gonzales installation is the hard drive is only being supported by small plastic rails on each side and friction from the front door. This means if one of those front doors ever pops out while in transit, say goodbye to mister hard drive because Murphy’s law states that a hard drive is going to hit something hard (like concrete or asphalt...or something soft and then be run over by a bus).

In the end it all depends on what you want to do with your enclosure. If it is going to stay in one place and just blend into the background, speed is always a good thing. However, if you are a road warrior and plan to take it on the road you may want to look elsewhere. Actually, if you are a road warrior and unless the data is absolutely unimportant to you, you should really look at a RAID enclosure for data security. Hard drives, even modern day ones are more shock proof still do not like being jostled around in a book bag or briefcase and usually show their displeasure by crashing on you at the worst possible moment.


The software installation while not exactly necessary is required if you want to use the one touch backup feature of this device. Once again the installation is very straightforward and goes very quickly once you realize the CD has no autorun feature. To install the software you simply have to insert the CD, open the folder called PCclone and press setup. When finished you are now the proud owner of PC Clone EX lite and your computer has a new application which loads on Windows start up.

While the software is very light weight and lacks anything even remotely looking like an advanced feature, it is a very intuitive program which will get the job done; or at least it will as long as the job is simple backups of files from your computer to the enclosure. One nice feature which it does have is you actually do not need to press the backup button on the enclosure to run the program; you can set a hot key which will do the exact same thing for you. As we mentioned earlier, this programs default setting is to load on startup but if you don not want it to you can disable this feature. Of course, if you do this you will have to manually run it before the backup button or hot key combination will work. Overall for Icy Box's price range this program is a very nice bonus but it certainly will not replace Acronis or Ghost.