Icy Dock EZ-Adapter Ex MB931U-1VB U.2 to USB 3.2 Gen2 Review

4
Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Top Power Button
Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Top Power Button

Sometimes there are products that are extremely useful. One of those we recently found was the Icy Dock EZ-Adapter Ex MB931U-1VB. Despite the long and cryptic name, this is a U.2 NVMe SSD to USB 3.2 Gen2 adapter which makes it extremely useful. In this review, we are going to take a look at the adapter, and also look at it in conjunction with theĀ EZConvert MB705M2P-B which is Icy Dock’s M.2 to U.2 adapter. With this combination, you can use M.2 and/or U.2 drives in both 2.5″ bays as well as with USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps ports.

Icy Dock EZ-Adapter Ex MB931U-1VB Overview

The EZ-Adapter Ex MB931U-1VB is a relatively small and lightweight unit. It is based on the ASM236X chipset and its primary function is to connect a 2.5″ NVMe SSD to a USB 3.2 Gen2 port at 10Gbps.

Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB NVMe SSD Connector View
Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB NVMe SSD Connector View

The top of the unit has the primary switch and the Icy Dock label. This switch powers the drive on and off. There is a small LED for power and activity.

Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Top Power Button
Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Top Power Button

On one end we have the SFF-8639 connector. This is what you typically will find on U.2 NVMe SSDs.

Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Front NVMe SSD Connector View
Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Front NVMe SSD Connector View

The other side has a 12V DC input as well as a USB Type-C connector.

Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Power And USB Type C
Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Power And USB Type C

With everything assembled, this is how the unit looks.

Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB With 15mm Intel 1
Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB With 15mm Intel 1

Here is a side view.

Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB With 15mm Intel 2
Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB With 15mm Intel 2

Something that we tested, and would have liked to be different is the two side protrusions that go on either side of the drive. We tried with a Supermicro drive tray and this design did not work.

Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Intel SSD With SM Caddy
Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Intel SSD With SM Caddy

We also tried a number of other server 2.5″ trays and found the same challenge. As an adapter, we would have liked if this could service drives still in trays since that saves an enormous amount of time swapping them from servers. One does not need to remove screws before adapting.

Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Dell SSD
Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Dell SSD

The unit itself is powered via a DC power brick. This is perhaps the biggest drawback to the design, but we can see why it is necessary given the varying quality of USB ports out there. Having a single USB cable would frankly be better, but we can understand why this solution is needed. The light would come on with just a USB cable, but we were not seeing drives power up without the DC adapter.

Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Power
Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB Power

On the subject of USB cables, we get a Type-C and Type-A cable included. Since we see this as the type of device intended to add more flexibility to a solution, this is a small but nice touch. At this price range, it is nice to see Icy Dock is including both.

Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB USB Type C And Type A
Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB USB Type C And Type A

In operation, one will likely turn the unit on/off using the power switch. This is important to do in order to insert or remove drives. Especially with higher-capacity drives that can be expensive, having this extra step adds a bit of safety to the process. One simply plugs a drive into the unt, turns the unit on, and the drive shows up in the OS.

Icy DockMB931U 1VB With MB705M2P B 1
Icy DockMB931U 1VB With MB705M2P B 1

We are just going to note here that we tried this unit with Intel, Samsung, Kioxia, and HGST NVMe SSDs and were successful using the drives. We are also going to note that, as you can see in the performance section, the performance is practically limited by USB 3.2 Gen2 speeds. As a result, there is little if anything to be gained by using a PCIe Gen4 SSD over a Gen3 NVMe SSD.

Icy Dock EZConvert MB705M2P-B Quick Overview

The Icy Dock EZConvert MB705M2P-B is the company’s option to convert a M.2 drive to a 2.5″ form factor SFF-8639 drive.

Icy Dock EZConvert MB705M2P B Internal 2
Icy Dock EZConvert MB705M2P B Internal 2

Sometimes M.2 SSDs are less expensive than 2.5″ drives and this provides an option for that conversion. Another really good use case is where one needs to rapidly cycle through M.2 drives, such as if you are a tech and need an easy option to convert to a different form factor. We wanted to highlight this in our review today because the MB931U-1VB provides for quick U.2 swapping and the MB705M2P-B allows one to bring M.2 drives into that ecosystem.

Icy Dock EZConvert MB705M2P B With Sabrent 1TB
Icy Dock EZConvert MB705M2P B With Sabrent 1TB

As a quick aside here, there are a number of vendors effectively offering the M.2 to USB 3.2 Gen2 capability either in an enclosure or as pre-packaged drives. When combined with the MB931U-1VB adapter, one has the ability to cycle through drives, but also install them directly into a 2.5″ U.2 bay for a more permanent solution.

Icy Dock EZConvert MB705M2P B Assembled 1
Icy Dock EZConvert MB705M2P B Assembled 1

Icy Dock EZ-Adapter Ex MB931U-1VB Performance

Performance is about what we would expect. Here we put the EZConvert MB705M2P-B enclosure using a 1TB Sabrent Rocket Q M.2 SSD into the USB 3.2 Gen2 adapter. If this was running at full speeds, we would expect 950MB/s to 1GB/s on the sequential tests instead of around half of that for Gen1 USB. Starting with the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, we get results that we would expect:

Icy Dock USB 3.2 Gen2 Sabrent 1TB In M.2 To U.2 Adapter BMD Disk Speed Test
Icy Dock USB 3.2 Gen2 Sabrent 1TB In M.2 To U.2 Adapter BMD Disk Speed Test

A quick note here is that other than the higher-end 4K footage and at higher framerates, this drive is keeping up. Here is the obligatory ATTO benchmark result:

Icy Dock USB 3.2 Gen2 Sabrent 1TB In M.2 To U.2 Adapter ATTO
Icy Dock USB 3.2 Gen2 Sabrent 1TB In M.2 To U.2 Adapter ATTO

Here is a CrystalDiskMark run:

Icy Dock USB 3.2 Gen2 Sabrent 1TB In M.2 To U.2 Adapter CrystalDiskMark
Icy Dock USB 3.2 Gen2 Sabrent 1TB In M.2 To U.2 Adapter CrystalDiskMark

Here is Anvil. While most of the other utilities have sequential reads closer to 1GB/s, Anvil is closer to 900MB/s. Still, this is faster than a USB 3.0/3.1 Gen1 port so it seems as though it is running at full speed.

Icy Dock USB 3.2 Gen2 Sabrent 1TB In M.2 To U.2 Adapter Anvil Storage Utilities
Icy Dock USB 3.2 Gen2 Sabrent 1TB In M.2 To U.2 Adapter Anvil Storage Utilities

Here is a AS SSD result:

Icy Dock USB 3.2 Gen2 Sabrent 1TB In M.2 To U.2 Adapter AS SSD
Icy Dock USB 3.2 Gen2 Sabrent 1TB In M.2 To U.2 Adapter AS SSD

The performance will vary, but we can see the UASP driver being used and delivering solid performance. This is not the same speed asĀ Sabrent Rocket Q drives can hit natively, nor is it as fast as many data center U.2 SSDs. Still, These are good results for a USB adapter that can swap drives easily.

Final Words

Overall, this worked well for us in a few weeks of testing. There are a few items we wanted to address with this solution.

Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB With HPE ProLiant MSG10P
Icy Dock EZ Adapter Ex MB931U 1VB With HPE ProLiant MSG10P
  • First, the unit is designed to leave a drive effectively in the open. While this may not seem like a bad idea, with higher-end enterprise NVMe SSDs, you may have to watch airflow. Server chassis are constantly pulling air across the drive surfaces. We can imagine that an adapter like this gets used for a drive, then the drive is covered by something while it is connected and it heats up too much.
  • Second, we would have liked to have seen this as a metal chassis. The plastic worked fine, but given the street price in the $115-120 range, it would have been nice to see.
  • Third, on that pricing note, the drives become even more expensive converting a M.2 SSD to 2.5″ U.2 with the EZConvert MB705M2P-B as that adds another $34 per drive.

All of those points aside, this is the type of enclosure that is extremely useful if you have a high-volume of NVMe SSDs you need to connect. If you work at an IT helpdesk, in a lab, do video production, or just have to move a lot of data using a sneakernet, this is one of those tools that may seem expensive at first but becomes extremely useful.

Icy DockMB931U 1VB With MB705M2P B 2
Icy DockMB931U 1VB With MB705M2P B 2

To our readers, conceptually, this device is not the most complex we review, but it may be one that we found to be extremely useful in our testing.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Once again Patrick you guys hit the ball out of the park with the honest and upfront reviews… I very much look forward to seeing the Saturday delivery of your newsletter… Always filled with great, useful and honest product leading industry reviews. This review is NO exception. Well Done and Thank you!

  2. @jord I use minitool partition wizard software. I have used it to clone an image I have built on a nvme drive. I have built a laptop image on an NVME drive stuck that into a desktop booted up to the Minidisk GUI from a USB and have clone that imaged out to SSDs connected via Sata or USB to Sata or NVME to PCI adaptors etc.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.