On our desk this week

Icy Box 2 external HDD caddy

We looked at the original Icy Box just over a year ago and its creators, RaidMax, are back with a second version.

What's changed? Not a whole lot. It's still a 3.5" external hard drive caddy. The design has been adjusted, with the new version looking rather G5-PowerMac-esque, but it's still made out of high quality aluminium. There's still a blue glow, but this time it's on the bottom, rather than on the sides.

Configuration-wise, it's now possible to get the Icy Box with a SATA internal connector, so you can hook up some of the huge new drives being made available on the market (although the version we have here is IDE). You can also get it with FireWire, as opposed to just USB 2.

As cold as Ice

In terms of performance, it's still almost exactly the same, as is the installation - plug it in, turn it on, and wait for your OS of choice (Windows, OSX and Linux supported) to detect it so you can format it.

In use, it performed flawlessly - but then, it's hardly a complicated bit of kit. We got good speeds which were limited by the speed of the drive we actually had in it.

One thing we'd like to see is a version of the box sporting a SATA cable for connection to the latest range of enthusiast boards which sport external SATA connectors, but we shall have to see if RaidMax decide to step into that arena.

The box is going to come in at around £20 when readily available - frankly, if you need a caddy, you have no reason not to buy this one.

Name: Icy Box 2
Buy it at: Maplin
Cost: Around £20, depending on configuration
Verdict: It looks great and does the job - what more could you want?