Product Reviews

If you have a spare hard disk, IcyBox's IB-360 caddy can turn it into an external disk. It can use any parallel ATA 31/2" IDE hard disk. It connects to your PC via USB Hi-Speed and requires an external power brick, so it's not ideal for physically moving data between locations.

We used a 160GB Hitachi DeskStar hard disk to test the performance of the IcyBox. The data transfer rates were 25.17MB/s for large files and 8.76MB/s for small files, roughly 50 per cent slower than when the drive was connected internally using a conventional parallel ATA interface. However, the overall speed of the drive is in line with other 31/2" USB2-connected external hard disks.

The price difference between internal and external hard disks of the same capacity tends to be around £30 to £40, so buying the IcyBox and an internal drive will only save you a few pounds. If you already have an ATA drive from an old system, however, it's an inexpensive way to add external storage.