Not all devices are created equal, and this can be seen with the ToughArmor MB998SP-B which skews the realm of possibilities. It boasts the ability to house an unprecedented 8 x 2.5” SATA drives with 5mm to 7mm height into a single external 5.25” bay, making it the ultimate solution for storage dense applications. Our unique hot-swappable 2.5” EZ Slide Nano trays let you painlessly and quickly swap out drives. Dual 40mm fans keep your drives nice and cool while ventilated openings located on the front and sides maximize airflow. The MB998SP-B features a rugged heavy duty full metal housing which is commercially designed for Medical & Military systems, IPC, enterprise, and industrial settings.
Countless Options in a Single Bay
Utilizing the standard external 5.25” bay form factor, the compact design allows the cage to be used in various applications such as advanced RAID. With the MB998SP-B it’s possible to build dual RAID 5 or RAID 10 arrays or use 4 drives in a high performance RAID 0 array plus two RAID 1 arrays for backups. The MB998SP-B is extremely useful for workstations, compact servers, gaming rigs, home servers or HTPC’s due to its high capacity and space saving design. It is also perfect for users that need non-RAID JBOD storage to save different content in different drive locations. It supports a wide-range of applications which makes the MB998SP-B invaluable.
Using the EZ Slide Nano trays makes drive interchangeability and maintenance completely hassle free. For drive security, the Eagle-hook lock system on the tray makes sure your hard drives will not eject when not needed. The trays are designed to accommodate 5mm to 7mm height hard drive and SSD, creating a 2.5" hot swap bay for any standard SATA hard drives and SSDs.
Heavy-duty
Ensuring the safety of your valuable data is the foundation to any good system build or design. The MB998SP-B is capable of holding up to the most demanding environments with its rugged heavy duty full metal construction in the entirety of the body and its smaller components. The ToughArmor's rugged full metal design is also perfect for industrial and medical devices that may require a flammability rating as the full metal material is considered to be already compliant with flammability requirements. An all metal design also dissipates heat from the hard drives to the backplane cage resulting in cooler drives. Lastly, Anti-Vibration Technology (AVT) and EMI grounding are used to ensure a stable environment for the hard drives or SSD’s used, dramatically improving reliability.
Packed with Features
Bringing more utility your hard drives or SSDs, LED’s are installed into the front of the mobile rack to provide individual drive status information at all times. Active Power Technology (APT) allows each LED and the cooling fan to be active only when a hard drive is inserted into the enclosure. When the unit does power up, two 40mm cooling fan placed strategically behind the rear panel provide airflow throughout the entire cage cooling all 8 bays effectively and efficiently.
Never forget which drives belong in what bays. With our individual drive ID labels you’ll always know which drive tray belongs in your RAID array or which drive contains certain files. Freely unplug and rearrange them to better suit your configuration or simply remove them for a more simplified look.
The ToughArmor MB998SP-B supports both 7pin SATA and 15pin SATA power cables with locking latches so you’ll never need to worry about cables unintentionally disconnecting from your enclosure. Once these cables are connected, they’ll lock into place and stay that way.
In order to lower the fan noise, installing the cable allows you to reduce 40% of the original fan's speed for a quieter operation of the unit. To install, unplug the 3-Pin fan connector from the port, then connect it to the fan speed reduction cable.
Make ToughArmor On-The-GO!
With MB991U3-1SB
To access your data outside of your system or in a remote location, the ToughArmor MB991U3-1SB is the way to go about. The drive tray slot of MB991U3-1SB is compatible with a variety of ToughArmor drive trays including the ToughArmor MB991, MB992, MB994, MB996 and MB998 series. This allows existing ToughArmor users to access their internal drive externally without opening up the case. It is a great tool for an individual drive diagnostic test. If you need to do a safe data erase or just simply expending system storage capacity, just remove the tray from the internal ToughArmor unit and insert it in the MB991U3-1SB to perform individual tasks externally with USB 3.0 interface. Best of all, the MB991U3-1SB uses USB bus-powered and it does not require a power adapter to operate. Simply connect the USB cable to any system and you are ready to go.
Drive Tray
EZ-Slide Nano Tray MB998TP-B DriveTray for ToughArmor MB998 Series
Tray Compatible with External ToughArmor:
Key Features
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Rugged Heavy duty full metal construction with commercially designed for Medical & Military systems, Media servers, and IPCs, approved & used by Tier 1 companies
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Perfect for rugged applications and complies to flammability requirements
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Fits 8 x 5mm to 7mm 2.5” SATA hard drives or SSD’s in a single external 5.25” bay for high performance RAID applications
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Dual 40mm fans keep your drives from overheating
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Requires only 2 x 15pin power connectors to power all 8 bays
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Drive label plugs to keep track of your RAID drives
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Anti-Vibration Technology (AVT) - creates a safe environment for hard drives or SSDs
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Active Power Technology (APT) - individual led & cooling fan only powers up if there is a drive installed in the bay
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Eagle-hook lock system keeps drives secured within the enclosure
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Removable tray system for easy maintenance
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Supports SATA 6Gbps and hot swap
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Supports SATA and SATA power cables with locking latch design
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Industry-leading 5 years limited warranty with exceptional customer support
Video
ICY DOCK ToughArmor MB998SP-B 8 x 2.5” SATA 6Gbps 7mm HDD / SSD Mobile Rack / Cage in 1 x external 5.25” bay
Product Name :
Full Metal 8 Bay 2.5" SATA HDD & SSD Backplane Cage
Model Number :
MB998SP-B
Color :
Black
Support Drive Size :
2.5" SSD / HDD
Compatible Drive Type :
SATA / SAS (Support Single Channel SAS)
Number of Drives :
8
Max Drive Height :
7mm
Drive Bay :
1 x external 5.25" drive bay
Host Interface :
8 x SATA 7pin
Power Input :
2 x 15 pin SATA power connector
Transfer Rate :
Up to 6Gbps (Depending on hard drive speed)
Support HDD Capacity :
No Limitation
Drive Cooling :
2 x 40mm fan
Structure / Material :
Full Metal
Support Hot-Swap :
Yes
Product Dimension (L x W x H) :
142.4 x 146 x 41.3 mm
Product Net Weight :
869g
Package Gross Weight :
984.5g
Drive Activity LED Indication :
Drive power: solid green; HDD access: flashing green
Package contents :
1 - Device ; 1 - user manual ; 1 - ID Plug ; 42 - screws ; 2 - Fan speed reduction cable
SATA Connector Insertion Rate :
10,000
Humidity :
5%~65% RH
Operating Temperature :
0°C to 60°C (32°F to 140°F)
Storage Temperature :
-35°C to 70°C (-31°F to 158°F)
Compliance :
CE, RoHS, REACH
Warranty :
5 years limited warranty
Documents
ICY Concepts
Maximizing Storage Performance in Limited Space with ICY DOCK ToughArmor 2.5" SSD/HDD Drive Cages
By using a high HDD density media workstation, media professions can perform highly intensive tasks while minimizing physical space displacement in their workstation such as HP Z820/Z840 and Dell 7810/7910. This concept can be achieved by using ICY DOCK’s MB998SP-B and MB996SP-6SB; they can accommodate up to 8 or 6 SSDs/HDDs in a single 5.25” device bay, respectively. This means maximum performance can be reached if RAID 0 is utilized for rendering media files in 3ds Max or Unity Pro 4. On the other hand, maximum storage capacity is also possible if each drive acted as a single volume. Limitless application can be configured with up to 8 bays of possibilities! On top of that, all of ICY DOCK’s ToughArmor come with hot swap capability. This means for individuals that need to transfer large media files from workstation to workstation, they can simply swap out the hard drive caddies or simply utilize Thunderbolt II/ III interface to transfer data off the workstation. It is quiet a handy tool!
Product Reviews
ICY DOCK ToughArmor MB998SP-B and MB993SK-B Review - Space Efficient Hot-Swappable SATA
Published on May 4, 2016 by Allyn Malventano
ICY DOCK has made themselves into a sort of Swiss Army knife of dockable and hot-swappable storage solutions. From multi-bay desktop external devices to internal hot-swap enclosures, these guys have just about every conceivable way to convert storage form factors covered. We’ve looked at some of their other offerings in the past, but this week we will focus on a pair of their ToughArmor series products.
Back in 2012 when I first started reviewing IcyDock’s ToughArmor lineup, the MB994SP-1 was the big dog -- sporting a total of four 2.5” devices in a single 5.25” slot. However, in 2013 IcyDock launched an even beefier 6-unit model the MB996SP-6SB. And now we have the MB998SP-B to take the crown once again.
The IcyDock ToughArmor 8 Bay 2.5" Drive Enclosure allows you to easily add 8 bays of hot swappable hard drives to a standard optical drive bay in a PC or Server. This is a great product if you want to build an SSD based caching server or any other SSD RAID configuration.
April 2016
Maximizing Your Data Security Physically and Electronically with ICY DOCK's ToughArmor 2.5" HDD or SSD mobile racks and Hard Drive Eraser Devices
How to customize and optimize a computer forensic workstation with CASELAB's Merlin SM8 and ICY DOCK's SSD/HDD high density storage kits for intensive digital forensic data analysis?
Safeguard your patient's critical information and records in an automated dispensing machine with ICY DOCK ToughArmor rugged hot swap storage enclosures.
Q: The mounting screws for the device seem to be too short to secure the device onto my system, what should I do?
A: For computer cases that have a thick metal sheet, the included mounting screws (M3*2.5L) may not fully secure the device. Please use longer screws (M3*4L) to secure the device or contact us at tech@icydock.com for replacement screws.
Q: Can I replace the cooling fan attached to the device? Will doing that void the warranty?
A:The cooling fan we used has been thoroughly tested with the drive enclosure to ensure it functions properly and supports the fan speed control (for select models). Therefore, we suggest our customers keep the original fan for the best result. However, we understand the stock fan may not be suitable for all the applications, so we elected to honor the warranty when 3rd party fan is using. The warranty may void if the 3rd party fan causes electrical damage to the device, though.
Q: Which specification should I check before buying the 3rd party cooling fan?
A:The following information is the fan specification requirement and compatible fan models for MB998SP-B
Fan Dimension (LxWxH)
40 x 40 x 10mm
40 x 40 x 20mm
Connector Type
3 Pin Wafer
Rated Voltage (VDC)
12V DC
Rated Current (A)
< 0.12A (127mA)
Screw Specification
Phillips Flat Head - M3 x 15mm - Steel (Came with stock fan)
Phillips Flat Head - M3 x 25mm – Steel (Not Included)
