Icy Dock MB982SPR-2S Dual 2.5″ to 3.5″ SATA HDD / SSD Converter Review

Final ThoughtsLooking back through the test data, it is clear that if you’re planning to use this enclosure for incorporating 2x SSDs into a RAID 0 array, don’t expect the same blistering speeds that you would find on a motherboard itself. This is down to 2 factors, one the onboard JMicron controller and secondly the speed and bandwidth limitations of SATA II. This is not to say that there is not a speed increase but with SSDs this is just not going to be possible without creating an enclosure that uses the SATA III interface; which would in turn make the price point higher from the start.

The only other real problem that we had was that until we updated the firmware to the latest release, the SSDs would not work in RAID 0. This is a known issue by Icy Dock and consequently they do mention this and supply a download on their website to update this.

After a bit of thinking and wondering where this has a place in the market, it came apparant that this would be best suited to slightly older systems that only have a single SATA port on the motherboard and thus you can increase your storage space, add another physical drive and also add a RAID solution to your system.

So where would I leave this? Icy Dock have created here a cracking little bit of kit, yes there are the couple of slight downfalls, one of which is easily rectified, but for those of you that are using a slightly older system or even one that is compact, the MB982SPR-2S is something to have a look at for adding a bit more storage space or speed to your system.