Icy Box FlexCage MB973SP 2B Trayless 3-in-2 SATA Backplane

1. Introduction2. Icy Box MB973SP3. Testing4. Conclusion5. View All Pages

Choosing a test rig for this situation is straightforward enough.

We pulled out our classic red Lian-Li full tower with a phenomenal 12 drive plates at the front.

Here's the full spec:-

• Processor: Core i7 3960 X Extreme Edition @ 4.4GHz
• Cooler: Antec 920 H20
• Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme
• Memory: 16GB G.Skill 2,400MHz
• Boot Drive: 240GB Kingston HyperX 3K
• Power Supply: Seasonic X-850
• Chassis: Lian Li PC-A77FR Aluminium Red Full Tower Case
• Hard Drive 1: 250GB Samsung 7200
• Hard Drive 2: 750GB Seagate 7200
• Hard Drive 3: 2TB Seagate 7200

CrystalDiskMark
This application was developed to help you get to know your HDD, so it has the power to measure sequential and random read/write speeds while displaying all details to the user with the help of a simple interface. You can manually select the number of test runs, the size of the test and the drive that will be analysed and then press the corresponding button to start all the tests. Best of all, it is free, quick to download and easy to install.

For this test, we used three different ‘full speed' hard drives, then ran CrystalDiskMark through 5 cycles.

Overall, the data transfer speeds we measured were consistent within ~5%.

Our oldest and smallest drive was also the slowest, as you would expect. Peak read comes in at a fraction under 97MB/sec with the write speed just over 94MB/sec.

With the 750GB Seagate model in the ‘G' bay, we achieved a better result.

Lastly, the ‘E' drive, with the kind of 2TB Seagate 7200 rpm drive that many of us have in our day to day systems.

To check for variations, we then moved the 250GB and 2TB drives around in the bays (as you would in normal use with a product like the IcyBox) and ran a series of ATTO tests.

ATTO Disk Benchmark
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes.

Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously.

Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

While we almost managed 97MB/sec with CrystalDiskMark, the ATTO result barely topped 60MB/sec in either direction.

Things picked up with the 750GB drive on the ‘G' slot – reporting a peak read of more than 105MB/sec, up from the 100.2MB/sec with CrystalDiskMark.

Finally, we checked the 2TB Seagate 7200 drive – now in the ‘F' slot. The best pattern peaked past 122MB/sec.

So performance wise, you will get a decent transfer speed from old hard drives plugged into the Icy Box MB973SP 2B FlexCage.

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