RaidSonic IcyBox IB-NAS5220-B review

£105 is a remarkably low price for a two-bay, RAID-capable NAS enclosure – that’s around the same price as most one-bay enclosures. The attractive metal case nevertheless feels well made. It’s also surprisingly compact and isn’t much bigger than most of its one-disk competition.

Fitting a disk isn’t as simple as it is on other NAS enclosures we’ve seen, but it’s not too tricky. It involves removing the front panel and sliding the disk into the empty bay until it clicks into place – the bottom disk has to go in first since the other disk sits directly on top of it. The side panels must then be removed, revealing the holes to securely screw the disks into place.

The web-based admin interface looks old fashioned compared to more sophisticated examples from rival NAS enclosures, but it’s logically organised and works well enough. A welcome screen lets you quickly create user accounts, set users’ quotas so they don’t gobble up all the available storage, assign them to different groups and set up a shared folder.

There’s still room for improvement, though. The controls for assigning users to a group are in a different part of the interface from account creation, for example. There aren’t any options to schedule the IcyBox so that it automatically starts up and shuts down, cutting your electricity bill.

When configured as either RAID 0 or RAID 1, the IcyBox performed acceptably when reading both large and small files, although the results were slower than average. Meanwhile, its speeds when writing both large and small files were among the slowest we’ve seen from a two-disk NAS enclosure. The small cooling fan was annoyingly loud in a quiet room, and it didn’t get any quieter when we weren’t stressing the system by copying files or playing high definition video.

The IcyBox has a range of extra features, but some of them didn’t work very well in our tests. The iTunes 10.1.2 Windows software couldn’t find the iTunes server we set up on the NAS – hardly an unusual problem – but difficulties getting a UPnP server up and running are more of a concern. This is a shame as, despite its unremarkable performance in our file transfer speeds, we had no trouble streaming a 720p HD video clip stored on the IcyBox to a Windows PC.

We were also disappointed to find that the interface for downloading BitTorrent files independently of a computer is integrated into the main admin interface. This means you can’t give other users on your network access to the BitTorrent download manager without also giving them access to the other, more sensitive controls too.

Sharing both a USB printer and the contents of a USB disk across our network worked smoothly. However, the two USB ports are oriented vertically in close proximity to each other, so you may need an extension cable when plugging in a chunky USB flash drive.

It’s a shame that the IcyBox’s performance and extra features aren’t up to scratch. However, if these issues aren’t important, then the low-cost IB-NAS5220-B may still be the NAS for you.