Icy Dock MB122 Internal Removable Drive - The Tray
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Now that we've examined the enclosure in detail, let's take a look at the tray itself.
In the above picture, you see our tray as it was when we took it out of the enclosure (it's easier to mount the enclosure inside your machine if the tray is removed). It's nothing much more than a silver box, designed to entomb a hard drive for transfer from place to place.
Opening the tray for the first time, we find everything we need to install the MB122. This includes the instruction manual, a wire to connect to the HDD activity pins on the motherboard, and a small baggie holding mounting screws and the key that locks the tray into the enclosure.
I took the opportunity to take a couple of pictures of the MB122 tray next to my MB452 tray. From the above pic, you can see that from the front they are very similar, except that the MB122 has the LCD display, where my MB452 does not.
From the back, a couple of things are immediately apparent. First, the MB122 tray is significantly shorter than the MB452 tray. Second, you can see how the MB452 utilizes the 64 pin connector, saving wear and tear on the hard drive connectors themselves. The MB122 on the left just has an opening, allowing access to the connectors to the drive once it is installed.
To mount the drive into the tray, you must turn the tray over and ease the drive into place from below. You can then install four screws to secure the hard drive in place within the tray, fastening it into the precise location it needs to be so the connectors on the hard drive will line up with the connectors in the enclosure. In the above picture, the four yellow arrows indicate the screws holding the drive in place. In addition, you can make out the hard drive connectors in the opening on the bottom.
It only took me about two minutes to install the enclosure into one of my machines. In this case, I installed it into a full tower system. Here's a pic of the enclosure under the CD ROM.
Now, all I had do to was slide the tray into place. So here's a pic of that.
The tray slides right into the enclosure with ease. Though I do admit, I had to wiggle the locking lever a little bit in order to get it to seat in completely. Remember earlier when I said I worried about the connectors on the hard drive?
Here's an image of the LCD display displaying, in this case, the temperature of the hard drive enclosure. This could be set to Fahrenheit or Celsius at the push of a button.
About this time is normally where I would do some benchmarking tests. But since we are basically running a SATA drive right off the motherboard SATA connection, these numbers would be useless.
Next: Conclusion >>
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