andrkac,
Review from a Slackware user:
Overall I'm really pleased with the ICY BOX, which does exactly what I wanted and performs beyond expectations. I'd say performance is as good as connecting directly to SATA, at least it was for the tests I've show below.
I'm dropping a star because I had a nightmare fitting the drives, due to the alignment of the backplane against the case. This was resolved by losening all the case and motherboard screws (probably voiding my warranty), installing the drives, then tightening the screws again, with the drives still fitted while I also held the backplane in place. Subsequent hot-swap drive installations and removals have been fine, but I don't expect to have to mess with stuff like that straight out of the box.
The only other minor gripes I have, which don't affect my given score are: (1) there is some fan noise when it spin on settings 2 or 3. It doesn't really bother me and you can switch speed between auto and manual 1,2,3 anyway. (2) I did knock the USB lead out of my computer once, which caused the RAID to stop. Fortunately, I didn't lose any data. It's not really a fault of the ICY BOX, but more to do with the fact that the design of the USB Type C connector is pretty naff.
I'm using this with Slackware Linux, as a disk-based Amanda backup virtual tape archive. I have 3 disks configured as MD RAID5, with a LUKS encrypted LVM on top, with one ext4 LV for the tapes, plus some unused space for future use (as well as the additional drive bay, which is mostly unoccupied).
My motherboard is an ASUS TUF GAMING X570-PLUS (WI-FI), which supports USB 3.2.
I purchased 3 new 4TB WD Red Pro WD4003FFBX drives at the same time as this and before migrating everything, I decided to run some basic speed tests to compare my old SATA-connected drives (ancient WD BLACK WD1002FAEX) /dev/sd[bcd], against the new Reds, connected to the ICY BOX as /dev/sd[fgh]. I'm using --direct to get a better idea of actual throughput, without buffering.
Here are some tests using hdparm - I'm sure there are better test tools, but this was good enough for me. The internal disks are the first three results and the ICY disks are the last 3 (which actually perform better than the old local disks):
$ sudo /sbin/hdparm --direct -t /dev/sd[bcdfgh]
/dev/sdb:
Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 380 MB in 3.02 seconds = 126.02 MB/sec
/dev/sdc:
Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 362 MB in 3.00 seconds = 120.65 MB/sec
/dev/sdd:
Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 426 MB in 3.01 seconds = 141.67 MB/sec
/dev/sdf:
Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 714 MB in 3.01 seconds = 237.40 MB/sec
/dev/sdg:
Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 742 MB in 3.01 seconds = 246.88 MB/sec
/dev/sdh:
Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 752 MB in 3.00 seconds = 250.52 MB/sec
antowen@thing:~$
Here are tests with the new disks swapped (the Reds are sdb, c and d now as they're on SATA and the old disks are on the ICY BOX), showing no significan speed difference between SATA and USB speed:
Code:
sudo /sbin/hdparm --direct -t /dev/sd[bcdefg]
/dev/sdb:
Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 720 MB in 3.00 seconds = 239.79 MB/sec
/dev/sdc:
Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 752 MB in 3.00 seconds = 250.26 MB/sec
/dev/sdd:
Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 760 MB in 3.00 seconds = 253.31 MB/sec
/dev/sde:
Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 374 MB in 3.00 seconds = 124.55 MB/sec
/dev/sdf:
Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 392 MB in 3.02 seconds = 129.96 MB/sec
/dev/sdg:
Timing O_DIRECT disk reads: 438 MB in 3.01 seconds = 145.57 MB/sec
I only tested the slower disks in parallel and they gave the same results as individuals. I forgot to test the faster disks.
Also, look at the reviews from Linux users on:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/External-En.../dp/B07G6X524P
