Icy Dock MB994SP-4SB-1 Full Metal Quad Bay 2.5″ SATA 6Gbps Backplane Review

As i mentioned back at the start of this review, I have a love for Icy Dock products and the MB994SP-4SB-1 that we have here is another testament to this. Starting from the outside and the overall build quality, the aluminium and SECC construction gives the backplane a rigid frame and a great finish that blends in with virtually any case that its installed into.

Installation of the cage and then the caddies into the frame is very easy to undertake and takes no time at all. As I mentioned back on the closer look at the caddies, the only problem that I found is with regards to the securing of drives to the caddies. It appears that the holes towards the rear could do with being spaced ever so slightly further apart as they don’t naturally line up neatly with the holes on both sides of a drive at the same time, whether this is a miscalculation in measurements or a manufacturing error I don’t know but hopefully Icy Dock will note this and rectify it soon enough.

The use of the EZ Slide Mini Trays is very, well, easy. Do note that as they come they don’t lock into place with a key and so if you have critical data stored on any installed drives, you may wish to invest in one of Icy Docks lockable enclosures that accept the EZ Slide Mini Trays.

Whilst this is not a performance piece of hardware, I did run a couple of tests to check that the onboard PCBs were not causing any form of bottleneck to what would be experienced without the backplane and I’m glad to say that you would be none-the-wiser that any drive was connected via this dock as we showed on the previous page.

So where would I expect to see this installed? There are a number of scenarios where this could be handy. First of all having four drive bays means that it’s ideal for a hot-swap RAID 5 enclosure and similarly a hot-swap backup enclosure where disks can be removed and replaced an a matter of seconds without having to open up the chassis and fiddle about inside. The other use is for smaller m-ATX systems where space inside the case is at a premium and by installing this into a 5.25″ drive bay, allows for an extra four drives to be installed allowing for extra storage space in turn.

On the whole I am very impressed with the MB994SP-4SB-1 and would certainly recommend it along with any other Icy Dock product if its suits the needs of any particular user and for around £45/$70, its build quality and functionality is well worth every penny /cent.