Final Touches on ATA: Hard-Drive Accessories Roundup

Raid Sonic Icy Box IB-3T4

The Icy Box IB-3T4 can hold up to four ATA hard drives (for Serial ATA support you'll need the IB-3T4S). It has a compact design that accommodates three 5.25" swap racks. The drives are cooled by a radial fan that dashes any hopes you might otherwise have had of using the 3T4 in a high-end desktop PC: it kicks up a mighty racket, despite being temperature-controlled.

Raid Sonic normally only sells the IB-3T4 with a matching controller. That's not a bad idea since models that don't use High Point's HPT374 seem to be 3T4-phobic and refuse to recognize any hard drives.

Once you've gotten the Icy Box to run, it's clear sailing from there. This slick box beeps whenever you exceed any of three temperature levels, of up to 65°C. We had no problems at all swapping out a RAID 5 hard drive while it was running. The only thing is that this product really ought to support other controllers, because a HighPoint controller is a far cry, feature wise, from a 3Ware or Raidcore controller.

Open Sesame! You can fit four hard drives into the IB-3T4.

The radial fan makes no bones about it: this box needs ventilation - loud ventilation.

The four IDE controllers are located below the fan.