Icy Box NAS IB-NAS2000

Conclusion

The RaidSonic Icy Box NAS is a very classy looking external storage solution that would look great next to any PC or around the home/office. With its brushed aluminium exterior and speed adjustable cooling fan, you can be certain that even the hottest of hard disks will be adequately cooled ensuring faultless operation.

Both the included manual and the Web based administration interface make setting up the unit extremely easy, and the ability to create users and private shares make the Icy Box NAS suitable for SOHO (Small Office Home Office) use.

Unfortunately the IB-NAS2000 does seem to be slightly behind the rest of the market in its specifications having no support for SATA hard disks or Gigabit Ethernet. Had both of these features been present on the IB-NAS2000 I’m fairly confident that we could have seen some better results both in the USB and Network benchmarks.

With a price tag of around £75 on several sites (Kenable.co.uk / Axia) and no hard disk included, the IB-NAS2000 does seem a little over priced – especially when you consider that NAS solutions with 200gb+ hard disks and Gigabit Ethernet from other manufacturers can be purchased for around £120.

Pro’s
• Stylish Aluminium enclosure.
• Easy to configure via Web interface.
• Detailed manual.
• Good performance over USB.
• Adjustable fan speed.

Con’s
• IDE interface. Getting harder to find large capacity IDE drives.
• 10/100Mbit Ethernet. Would benefit from Gigabit Ethernet.
• Very pricey at most retailers.

Thanks to RaidSonic for providing this item for review.

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