Warranty, Pricing, and Conclusion
Warranty
The ICY DOCK ToughArmor MB516SP-B (and virtually every other ToughArmor branded product) ships with a 3-year warranty.
Pricing
I also listed the price of the MB998SP-B to keep some perspective. While we are comparing a street price to an MSRP, mainly due to the early review of this product and its lack of hitting the larger outlets just yet, we do have a 2.8x price difference for a product with only 2x the number of bays. That said, I have found it online for as low as $288 (NextWarehouse) as of this writing, and it is also worth considering you are getting miniSAS HD connectivity instead of the hassle of dealing with 16 individual SATA cables.
Conclusion
ICY DOCK has made hot swap enclosures in 4-bay, 6-bay, and ultimately 8-bay. I didn't expect them to step this further, but they certainly surprised me. The change did require a taller dual-bay 5.25" form factor and a transition to quad mini-SDS HD ports, but those are welcome and necessary additions. If you are looking for a well built 16-bay how-swap backplane and have a pair of 5.25" bays available to do so, the ICY DOCK MB516SP-B offers an easy solution for this need.
I'm awarding the MB516SP-B Editor's Choice as it's the only game in town for fitting 16 2.5" 7mm drives into a dual 5.25" housing. Not only does it meet that goal, it does so in a high-quality and highly durable fit and finish.
Allyn, We’d LUV to see a
Allyn, We’d LUV to see a future review of the recently announced IcyDock ToughArmor MB699VP-B:
4 Bay 2.5″ NVMe U.2 SSD Mobile Rack For External 5.25″ Bay
https://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=255
This is interesting. What is
This is interesting. What is the highest temperature on prolonged read/write?
It’s barely above ambient so
It's barely above ambient so long as the fan is running. There is a lot of room for airflow on this cage, and the 80mm fan moves a decent amount of air even at low speed.
I just read the review of
I just read the review of this and it looks like a real winner in both the performance aspect being fairly good and the ease of use.
My real question is this do the cables to connect the unit to a raid card come with it or do you have to buy those on your own. If they do not come with it what will a set of Data cables set you back. The raid card you have in the picture what is it worth and are there other options that are cheaper if that card is a bit costly?
This setup looks like it would work well with lets say 16 2TB 2.5 HDD drives or for that matter 1TB HDD drives and still give you great performance and a lot of storage but I would think that with 16 spindle drives the heat output would be a lot higher.
Allyn and I have had a long
Allyn and I have had a long running debate about
Highpoint controllers, and I must concede that
he is usually always right for preferring
the more expensive models like Areca.
As Allyn explains, he used two different AICs,
one of which is a Highpoint RocketRAID 840A.
“We confirmed this with two different RAID cards – A Highpoint RocketRAID 840A and an Areca ARC-1883ix-24”
https://www.pcper.com/image/view/90613?return=node%2F69501
HighPoint RocketRAID 840A PCIe 3.0 x8 6Gb/s SATA RAID Host Bus Adapter:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6ZP4VE3760&Tpk=9SIA6ZP4VE3760
As far as I know, that model 840A does NOT come
with compatible cables; they must be purchased
separately. Perhaps Allyn could provide us
with a make and model number for the cables
that he did use successfully.
HighPoint RocketRAID 3740A 12Gb/s PCIe 3.0 x8 SAS/SATA RAID Host Bus Adapter:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115206&Tpk=N82E16816115206
The latter is designed to work with 12G SAS devices.
Unfortunately, SATA-III is still stuck at 6G.
It would be nice if the industry would embrace a
SATA-IV standard that supports 12G and 16G clock speeds,
and optionally supported the 128b/130b jumbo frame
in the PCIe 3.0 standard.
This approach would allow chipsets to “sync” with
storage subsystems:
http://supremelaw.org/patents/BayRAMFive/SATA-IV.Presentation.pdf
We can still hope.
You have to buy the cables,
You have to buy the cables, which makes sense because you could also use this enclosure with a RAID card that had mini-SAS (non HD) as an example, and would then need a different cable type. Heck, you could even connect a set of 4 SATA ports on the host to a single mini-SAS HD connector of this enclosure.
GREAT to know about these
GREAT to know about these other cabling options, Allyn!
You are THE BEST, MAN!
/s/ Paul
The 7mm spindle drives that
The 7mm spindle drives that fit in this enclosure would only be single platter and would generally be lower power designs.
Oops! Just found a 12G SAS
Oops! Just found a 12G SAS SSD:
only $2,400 for 800GB:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAD075UU5896&Tpk=9SIAD075UU5896
HP’s model is a little bit cheaper:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA25V6X63773&Tpk=9SIA25V6X63773
only $2,365!
Also, Allyn, I may have
Also, Allyn, I may have missed it, but after a second read, I didn’t see any mention of the RAID mode you used during testing. Was it RAID-0, or some other RAID mode? Thanks!
It was RAID-0. Keeping it
It was RAID-0. Keeping it simple for these tests.
If anyone is curious, the
If anyone is curious, the Highpoint 840A is also bootable:
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series-rr800-specification.htm
click on “Advanced RAID Features”
and find:
Bootable RAID Array YES
This looks like an
This looks like an interesting “ingest option” for those HD/UHD Cameras that use standard SSDs for recording media. Being able to “insert” 16 SSDs could allow you to ingest from 16 SSDs to a “big” drive or drive array on board the “ingest machine”, whether that’s 16 individual cameras, or simply 16 SSDs from a smaller number of cameras.
Great review Alyn. Your input
Great review Alyn. Your input is always the highlight for me on the podcast.
We will be applying shortly
We will be applying shortly for a Utility Patent
on a device that clones Allyn Malventano.
Stay tuned: Film at 11!