Thermaltake BlacX Duet eSATA USB Dual Hard Drives Docking Station ST0014U

by Thermaltake

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 3.8 x 6.7 x 7.7 inches ; 2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B002MUYOLW
• Item model number: ST0014U
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (99 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #70 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > External Data Storage > External Hard Drives
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 25, 2009

Product Description

Industry's most trusted hard drive docking station is now twice as convenient. BlacX Duet now offers two slots to turn any Serial ATA hard drives into external USB 2.0 or eSATA storage device in minutes. Moving large chunks of videos, musics or data files between hard drives will now happen in blazing speed (up to 3.0 Gbps for eSATA or 480Mbps for USB 2.0) instead of the slow network cable. The dock supports all 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch SATA hard disk drives up to 2 TB. Installation requires no screws or tools whatsoever. Simply pop your hard drive into the dock, plug it into your computer and you are set! Hot-swap support means you can use multiple hard drives with your computer without having to reboot. The dock also maximizes heat dissipation and exhaust to protect your device from damage and extend its life. Compatibility with both PCs and Macs makes the BlacX Duet adapt to multi platform environments.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

97 of 105 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Overheating problems, December 15, 2009

By 

John (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Thermaltake BlacX Duet eSATA USB Dual Hard Drives Docking Station ST0014U (Personal Computers)

Bought the unit for a computer with P7P55D Pro motherboard running Linux (Fedora 12). The system recognized the port multiplier without issues; two disks over eSATA worked out of the box. Tested it with two 500G drives (a Seagate and a WDC). Reading from a single drive gives a decent ~75 MB/s; simultaneous reads from two drives drop the rate to 45 MB/s.

A major problem, though: while idle, the drives hover around ~47 degC. With ~1hr of heavy reading, they heat up to ~60 degC (with ambient temps around ~20 degC). The design of this dock blocks _all_ airflow to the bottom end of the drives, leading to severe overheating. This makes BlackX practically useless for duplication of larger drives; they'll overheat/fail long before the duplication has finished. E.g., I managed to copy ~150G of a 500G drive before it hit 60degC and stopped.

Looks like a major design flaw; plan to return it.

41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Would buy the single drive version if given the choice again, November 23, 2009

By 

G. Morris (Chatworth, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Thermaltake BlacX Duet eSATA USB Dual Hard Drives Docking Station ST0014U (Personal Computers)

I bought this mainly for the fast eSata support, but was greatly dissapointed to find out that my computer will not support dual eSata as it doesn't have port multiplier functionality. My computer is fairly new as well and running Windows 7 Professional. Most people won't know if their computer has port multiplier functionality until they buy an item such as this and try it. Dual drives work good using USB, but you only get 400MB transfer rates and not 3GB as you do with eSata. The eSata with 1 drive does work but is somewhat flakey as well. What will happen is at least 25% of the time when you reboot the computer and you are using the dock connected via eSate cable, the computer will lose sight of the dock and tell you there is no eSata dock/drive connected. Only way to redetect the dock and drive is to power down the dock as well as computer, then power on the dock, let the drive initialize for approx. 30 seconds, then power back on the computer. Using the USB cable, this does not happen, so one can only assume the eSata connectivity between the port and the computer is flakey. Other than that, I like the dock as it's fairly light and easy to use amoung several computers to backup and copy data too.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Has issues on Mac with USB, February 12, 2010

By 

Brian "brianinsf" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Thermaltake BlacX Duet eSATA USB Dual Hard Drives Docking Station ST0014U (Personal Computers)

The product works great when you are just reading from the drive on a Mac. The problem comes when you try to write. The drive get's messed up and can't write any longer. You get an Error -50 when you try a write operation. From the finder it's easy to see, but some applications don't handle the error veery well and you can think the file ha been updated when it hasn't. If you force eject the drive and remount you can write to the drive but after a while the error 50 comes up again. The single drive version works great on the Mac but not the double drive version.