Product Description

PRODUCT FEATURES:Patented designRoHS complianceHot-swap capability for rapid multi HDDs access and exchangeSupports eSATASupports USB 2.0Compact docking station design maximizes heat dissipation and exhaust

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #269 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Thermaltake
• Model: ST0005U
• Dimensions: 2.56" h x 3.55" w x 5.12" l, 2.00 pounds

Features

• Supports All 2.5" and 3.5" SATA Hard Disk Drives, up to 2TB
• 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

Customer Reviews

Dual boot, extra storage, fast, and accessible. I love it...
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.

Works Fine, But Cables Are Too Short
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.

Wish I thought of this
This is the best thing ever invented since water. think of just the few uses you can apply this device on:
-drive cloning without having to open up your box,and pluggin HD's in and out.
-having multiple drives for multiple OS to boot from.
-drives are cheap, pop these suckers in like you popping in discs.
-back up with bare drives?
This HD docking device is just so freakin' convenient! and...for under $40?
...oh, yeah....for you geeks out there, "size doesn't matter" in this case, so relax. You can pop in any size hard drives you want.