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Technical Details
- Supports all 2.5" and 3.5" SATA hard disk drives, up to 2 TB
- Hot-Swap Capability for Rapid Multi HDDs Access and Exchange
- Supports eSATA Transfer Speed up to 3Gbps
- Supports USB 2.0 Transfer Speed up to 480Mbps
- Compact Docking Station Design Maximizes Heat Dissipation & Exhaust
Product Details
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Product Description
Thermaltake BlacX 2.5in/ 3.5in SATA HDD USB and eSATA Docking Station"Patented Design RoHS Compliance Supports All 2.5 & 3.5 SATA HDDs up to 1TB ! Hot-Swap Capability for Rapid Multi HDDs Access & Exchange Supports eSATA Transfer Speed up to 3Gbps Supports USB 2.0 Transfer Speed up to 480Mbps Windows & Mac OS Compatible Compact Docking Station Design maximizes Heat Dissipation & Exhaust Windows Vista Ready !Primary InformationModules Qty Supported : N/A Installed Modules Qty : N/A Storage ControllerStorage Controller Type : N/A RAID Level : N/A Supported Device : N/A UNSPSC CodeUNSPSC Code : 24102001
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
104 of 107 people found the following review helpful
Amazon Verified Purchase
Works great. On e-sata, it is every bit as fast as if it was internally installed. I haven't used the USB interface, but it is probably quite a bit slower. My hard drives run barely warm to the touch. The eject button is really only there to help you pull it out. It works best for me to grab the drive and pull while pressing the button. The dock holds on to the drive pretty tightly, and if you eject the drive by simply pressing the eject button without holding/pulling the drive itself, it could easily pop completely out and fall on the desk or the floor. Falling isn't particularly great for hard drives, even if it is only a few inches.
This is SO much more useful than an enclosed external hard drive if you need several. Bare hard drives are a lot cheaper than the ones built into enclosures. They are very easy to install in this dock. It works a lot like putting an iPod into a dock, but this is a lot more robust. I use several hard drives in my computer. I have music on one, movies and recorded TV on another, etc., to keep all of that kind of stuff off my main drive. I have a couple more I use as backups. I put them in an antistatic bag and in my fire safe.
Some reviewers have commented about how it says it works up to 1TB or 1.5 TB. If yours says it works up to 1TB, it is only because you got an older printing of the box. When the box was printed, the largest drives commonly available were 1 TB. Now they have changed the box and the web site to say 1.5 TB. They only changed the box, not the product. I'm not sure why they put the "up to X.X TB" in there. Now drives are up to 2 TB, and they will all work with this as long as the BIOS and the OS in your PC will work with them. When they say "up to X.X TB", it leads people to believe that anything bigger won't work, but it will. This thing doesn't have a controller chip with a bios in it, just a simple straight through connection for the sata, and a simple bus bridge chip for USB.
This is SO much more useful than an enclosed external hard drive if you need several. Bare hard drives are a lot cheaper than the ones built into enclosures. They are very easy to install in this dock. It works a lot like putting an iPod into a dock, but this is a lot more robust. I use several hard drives in my computer. I have music on one, movies and recorded TV on another, etc., to keep all of that kind of stuff off my main drive. I have a couple more I use as backups. I put them in an antistatic bag and in my fire safe.
Some reviewers have commented about how it says it works up to 1TB or 1.5 TB. If yours says it works up to 1TB, it is only because you got an older printing of the box. When the box was printed, the largest drives commonly available were 1 TB. Now they have changed the box and the web site to say 1.5 TB. They only changed the box, not the product. I'm not sure why they put the "up to X.X TB" in there. Now drives are up to 2 TB, and they will all work with this as long as the BIOS and the OS in your PC will work with them. When they say "up to X.X TB", it leads people to believe that anything bigger won't work, but it will. This thing doesn't have a controller chip with a bios in it, just a simple straight through connection for the sata, and a simple bus bridge chip for USB.
102 of 106 people found the following review helpful
Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a great device for a bunch of reasons:
1. Backup. Using Acronis True Image 11 home, I can clone the drive in an hour. Put it off site and a bulletproof backup.
2. Reinstalling the operating system. I just reinstalled Vista (use it full time now that SP1 is out). I put my old Vista drive in the Blacx and could pull any info I needed right off the drive.
3. Booting different operating systems. I have three hard drives with different operating systems on them, Vista, XP , and Linux. I used to have them all in my PC but was afraid of a catastrophic failure (due mostly to me- I am a menace to my poor computer!). Now I can keep the drives out of the PC but insert and boot from them at any time. Just change the order of the boot hard drive in the BIOS.
4. Extra storage. Nice to be able to dump a bunch of older stuff into a drive. Keeps my boot drive clean and the access is there when I need it.
Cons? Not many. My WD drives run a little hot in the BlacX when booting from it. The power cord to the box is pretty short. You need to have an ESATA port on your PC (or in my case, and adapter and change the port in the BIOS).
Speed? On the ESATA, I notice NO speed slowdowns when booting from a drive in the BlacX in comparison to an internal SATA hard drive. They got it right with ESATA.
Clever engineering, works fine, easy to use, 5 stars.
1. Backup. Using Acronis True Image 11 home, I can clone the drive in an hour. Put it off site and a bulletproof backup.
2. Reinstalling the operating system. I just reinstalled Vista (use it full time now that SP1 is out). I put my old Vista drive in the Blacx and could pull any info I needed right off the drive.
3. Booting different operating systems. I have three hard drives with different operating systems on them, Vista, XP , and Linux. I used to have them all in my PC but was afraid of a catastrophic failure (due mostly to me- I am a menace to my poor computer!). Now I can keep the drives out of the PC but insert and boot from them at any time. Just change the order of the boot hard drive in the BIOS.
4. Extra storage. Nice to be able to dump a bunch of older stuff into a drive. Keeps my boot drive clean and the access is there when I need it.
Cons? Not many. My WD drives run a little hot in the BlacX when booting from it. The power cord to the box is pretty short. You need to have an ESATA port on your PC (or in my case, and adapter and change the port in the BIOS).
Speed? On the ESATA, I notice NO speed slowdowns when booting from a drive in the BlacX in comparison to an internal SATA hard drive. They got it right with ESATA.
Clever engineering, works fine, easy to use, 5 stars.
51 of 53 people found the following review helpful
Functionally, I have no problem with this hard disk docking station. Loading and unloading drives is very easy and requires no special drive rails. Because the drive aren't fully enclosed as they would be in a standard drive enclosure, they run fairly cool. Surprisingly, (since the drives are not fully enclosed) there doesn't seem to be any more drive noise than with a regular enclosure. The only fault I can find is that the cables are too short. Both the eSATA cable and the power cable are only about 3 and 1/2 feet long. That's just not long enough. Three and a half feet is just barely long enough to reach from the eSATA port on the back of my computer to my desktop. Likewise, it's just barely enough to reach from there to my UPS. Unless the top of your computer is fully accessible and that's where you plan to keep the enclosure (and it's close to your power supply), you need to be aware of this. I can understand 3.5 feet for the length of an eSATA cable. But, the power cable should be at least twice that. Because of the cable length issue, I'm knocking off one star and giving this Thermaltake BlacX eSATA Docking Station a Very Good four stars out of five.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Worked great until it failed after a month
Like the title of my review says it worked great until after a month it failed. I can't get any of my PC's to recognize any hard drives plugged into it using either eSATA or USB. Read more
Published 7 days ago by M. Johnson
Total junk
Worked for a little while, then complete failure. Messed up two different brand new hard drives. AVOID this product. It's junk.
Published 16 days ago by JoshInLA
Extremely useful SATA drive dock
This dock is extremely helpful to have on hand, especially at this price point.
I have two, one at home, and one I use at work in a datacenter environment. Read more
I have two, one at home, and one I use at work in a datacenter environment. Read more
Published 25 days ago by zishbu
Thermaltake To The Rescue
My mother-in-law's one year old Windows 7 desktop decided to start locking up on startup (big surprise).
Couldn't get it to boot into safe/recovery mode. Read more
Couldn't get it to boot into safe/recovery mode. Read more
Published 26 days ago by The Rainmaker
Good purchase
This is the second unit I purchased. For some reason on my PC my eSATA connection only works if the Thermaltake Docking Station is already turned BEFORE I turn on my PC (I think it... Read more
Published 1 month ago by G. Papadopoulos
Excellent USB docking station for eSATA bare hard drives
I've used this docking station for 2 years with no problems at all. I need to upgrade now because it only supports drives up to 2TB. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Richard M. Green
Works like a charm!
we use this in office as part of our troubleshooting tools. we use it to try to recover and transfer data.
Published 1 month ago by moschino
Power Switch Failure
Power switch failed. Have to keep the button pushed in for power. What a pain. Worked fine initially. As mentioned by someone else, probably a heat related issue. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Jimbo1007
Defective "out of the box"
Based on other reviews, this seems to be a quality piece, when it works that is. Regrettably, after evidently wasting my time reading reviews to select which of the many eSATA... Read more
Published 2 months ago by thehammer
Stay away
Unpredictable in eSATA - disconnects at will.
USB is just as bad - this is a junk product all the way. Read more
USB is just as bad - this is a junk product all the way. Read more
Published 2 months ago by TANSTAAFL
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