Icy Dock MB882SP-1 S

Icy Dock MB882SP-1 S" is a long name for a clever little device that allows you to insert your 2.5-inch SATA notebook hard drive or SSD into a con­verter that effectively makes the drive physically the same size as a 3.5-inch hard drive. The converter solves the problem of trying to fit an SSD or notebook drive into a desktop PC case. Indeed, when a drive is safely inserted into the Icy Dock MB882SP-1S, the whole shebang will fit into a drive bay or external hard drive enclosure designed for a 3.5-inch drive. The converter can handle 3Gbps drives with a max capacity of 500GB and sports airflow vents for heat dissipation. Even with a 2.5-inch drive inside, the Icy Dock MB882 is incredibly light. Altogether, the 2.5-inch drive and the enclosure weigh

less than a typical 3.5-inch hard drive. I was impressed by how easy it was to install the hard drive in the enclosure. There are no screws required. You just slide the top open, place the drive inside, and slide the lid shut. Done.

To test whether the MB882SP-1 S would affect read/write speeds, I ran the drive on PCMark Vantage with and with­out the converter. The resulting scores showed a slight but negligible difference in performance between the two. Without the converter, the hard drive averaged 3318 over two runs with an average of 3286 over two runs with the converter.

I pulled the hard drive out of the converter after a few rounds of PCMark to check the tempera­ture, and I was disappointed to find it quite warm. The bottom line is that the Icy Dock MB882 is a device designed so simply and elegantly that it requires infinitesimally more effort to swap in and out of a com­puter as any 3.5-inch hard drive. This is definitely a product you want to have in your toolbox if you work with SSDs or notebook hard drives .