Icy Dock MB080U3S-1SB Blizzard 3.5″ SATA External Hard Drive Enclosure Review

With the drive out of the box and the feet fitted, first impressions in my mind are a bit marmite. Personally I’m not a big fan of the huge fan that protrudes out of both sides of the case making it much wider than it needs to be. On the flipside though I can see the advantage of such a design as the larger opening at the front allows for much more air to be drawn in by the huge 80mm fan forcing it through the enclosure and out the back to keep the drive cool.

Taking a look underneath, we can see where the two legs clip in to keep the drive upright.

On either side of the enclosure is a large button which when pressed along with the other button on the opposite side, release the fan housing which can then be slid out of the frame.

With the fan housing removed, we can get a better view of the large opening that Icy Dock have created to draw air past the drive. We also note that there are no wires connecting both parts of the cooling system together and at the bottom, two metal pins can be seen that connect up the fan when the front cover is pushed back into place.

With the front cover off, a 3.5″ drive easily slides into the enclosure and pushes onto the SATA power and data connections at the back. Removal is simply achieved by pulling the drive back out.

Whilst the drive is powered up, the LEDs as mentioned previously light up blue and turn red when the drive temperature raises above 50 degrees celcius. Above the fan there is a green power led and to the right an amber activity is also found.

Last of all and moving round to the rear of the enclosure, we can take a look at the connections on offer. Starting from the left we have the DC jack and ON/OFF rocker switch, eSATA port and USB3.0. To the right of the USB3.0 port is a rotary dial to adjust the brightness of the LEDs inside case and at the far right is a 3 way switch to set the fan speed high, low or automatic which raises the fan speed from low to high when the drive temp reaches the 50c threshold.