Icy Dock Shuttle Disk Firewire Enclosure

reviewed by Wayne LeFevre

The first thing I noticed when I opened the box for the Icy Dock Shuttle Disk enclosure was the packaging and packing. I know that there are some that take great care and glee when they open their Apple product, me, not so much. However I had to admit I was impressed. No Styrofoam here, but a nice, embossed molded plastic that kept everything in it's place. There was nothing missing, either, to keep you from getting up and running in no time, except, of course, the hard drive. You will have to supply your own 2.5" IDE hard drive. Unfortunately, these drives being smaller and usually for laptops tend to be more expensive per gigabyte than your average 3.5" drive. This enclosure is a small enclosure, however, so it all depends on what you want to do with your particular needs. Will you be using it as a backup for your laptop, or a secondary drive to hold pictures, movies, etc? The smaller drive will, of course, do both, so the Shuttle is a fine alternative. It looks great sitting on it's four rubber feet securely to your desktop.

The box included a 6-pin –to-6 pin 6-foot FireWire cable, a 5 volt DC Power Transformer, the Shuttle Disk enclosure, a manual, and to top it all off, a nice felt storage traveler bag. A nice addition that wasn't expected. The transformer also had folding, retractable electric prongs to make a nice compact design. The manual was short, but understandable and easy to follow with plenty of illustrations.

By following the manual, installation of the hard disk was a breeze. The hard disk itself is mounted to a circuit board with supplied screws. The board is then mounted to four rubber stanchions suspending the hard disk to prevent shock and vibration. The securing screws attaching the top and bottom of the Shuttle Disk pass through these stanchions and secures the circuit board between the two half's of the Shuttle enclosure. Plugging in the transformer and the FireWire cable, the drive was immediately recognized. There were no extra steps involved or software to install.

After closing up the Shuttle with a 20 Gig hard drive, I weighed it at 1/2 pound, or about 250 grams. I thought it was a nice, light weight compared to some other enclosures I've seen. There is also no fan, so no noise.

Speaking of the enclosure itself, I think it's a great design. It almost reminds me of the concept cars of the 60's and 70's. There are no hard corners on it, making it very easy to slip into a pocket in a briefcase or bag, without having it catch on anything. It's made entirely of aluminum, so it's very sturdy. It's supposed to distribute heat evenly because of the aluminum enclosure, though I never ran into a situation that even made the case warm. The sides are rubber to assure that you have a firm grip on the enclosure.

There are two LCD's in the front that inform you of power and when the disk is accessing. When plugged in, there was no problem in recognizing or accessing the drive, though there is no power switch, so when it's plugged in it's on all the time. There also was no battery-only option on this model, though it's apparent that they may have that option in future models. The manual hinted that there may be an internal PC 5.25 inch docking station to accompany the drive, also in the future. I admit, it would be neat to be able to just slide the whole enclosure into the front of your PC, akin to a Zip disk in the past. Not a option for us Mac users, but the FireWire works just fine.