Drive installation with the Raidsonic Icy Box NAS is straightforward. After removing four tiny screws from the base, the outer shell slides off to reveal the crudely cut inner case.
Rubber grommets provide a decent amount of vibration dampening. There's a fan slotted into the back of the enclosure and a moveable temperature sensor that needs to be near the drives.
Then, with two drives connected, you can choose between a RAID 0, 1, NRAID and JBOD configuration and a variety of file systems.
After the format and a reboot, Icy Box is easy to use. Several shared folders are set up automatically, and you can start accessing these from Windows, Linux and OS X machines.
Samba sharing is on the slower side, writing around 6.8MB/s and reading slightly quicker (7.5MB). The less labour intensive NFS was quicker, but you'll need a Linux client.
A couple of USB ports expand external storage, but we'd prefer to see eSATA and a proper overhaul of the GUI.
