Product Details
- Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 3.5 x 2.6 inches ; 1.6 pounds
- Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
- ASIN: B0012Z3MKW
- Item model number: N0028USU
List Price :
Price : $28.70
You Save : $1.29 (4%)
Product Description
Thermaltake N0028USU HDD Docking Station. The picture is for display only and the hard drive is not included.
Thermaltake Sata HDD USB Docking Station
Technical Details
- Supports All 2.5" ; 3.5" SATA HDDs up to 2 TB
- Hot-Swap Capability for Rapid Multi HDDs Access ; Exchange
- Supports USB 2.0 Transfer Speed up to 480Mbps
- Compact Docking Station Design maximizes Heat Dissipation ; Exhaust
- Windows ; Mac OS Compatible
Costumer Reviews
If you're like me and have a plethora of homeless drives laying around, than this is for you. Drives are getting bigger and bigger while simultaneously decreasing in price. This usually results in keeping the biggest and best setups as your main stay backup external storage volumes. What you end up with after all this upgrading, even if its not so frequent (as in once a year), is drives without a use. Now it would be really wasteful to buy a bunch of extra external cases just to keep all these unused drives in. So this dock makes all those unused drives very useful again, without filling your wall up with warts or your USB slots with endless external drives.
This product is not a Thermaltake product as such, it's just rebadged by them. I would have hoped they would have opted to use the more versatile edition which included USB 1.1/2.0 FireWire 400/800 and eSATA, however I imagine they went this route to keep the cost down, as not to many people need the speed of those other faster interfaces. All in all this product is solid, even though its made from plastic its well weighted and doesn't walk or shutter as the drive is in use (even with a 10,000 rpm Raptor drive inserted). The vertical placement of the drive seems to perform well in both allowing gravity to "seat" the drive in place as well as allow for adequate cooling. I would however not recommend you leave a "docked" drive always on as it would not be wise without some sort of external cooling especially when placed on an electronically cluttered desk.
The dock serves more as a quick backup tool and allows for convenient incremental storage of critical files, which can then be ejected and stored in a small safe for fire/water protection or in a closet, so as to not be physically connected to the machine 100% percent of the time. Its peace of mind for your photos/videos or other family files that insurance can't pay for.
I own two of these docks and have to say that buying this has made my backup regiment a hole lot more viable. Plus who really wants a desktop cluttered with a bunch of external drives when all you have to do is keep naked drives in a drawer/safe with labels taped onto them for offline backup.
This dock is so versatile that I was able to use it to recover the game saves on an Xbox 360 that failed due to dreaded "ring of red lights" hardware failure. This is important to note, as this dock was made to handle both full desktop sized 3.5 inch drives as well as the notebook 2.5 inch drives, which the Xbox 360 uses.
The only possible weakness of this dock is static discharge, as you are handling the drive without any kind of shielding or covering for the exposed electronics its attached board. To alleviate the risk of possible damage to the drive from static, I'll generally grasp an exposed metal section of my machine prior to attempting to handle a drive to discharge any static I might be carrying. It would also be wise to avoid grasping the drive by its electronics board directly instead holding it by its edges as you would a deck of cards.
In conclusion I would have to say this is a great product at a great price. And it will give a home to all those drives you thought you were going to have to destroy or sell on eBay.
The only beef I have with this device is that the patented connector doesn't connect very well. I tried it with both 2.5" and 3.5" drives and had the same problems with both. The hole for the drive doesn't quite fit the drive, so some fiddling is needed to get it in. In addition, making a positive connection to the cable connectors is tricky and takes more force than I really feel comfortable with on small plastic parts.
On the positive side, once the drive is in, everything works find and seems to run as fast as USB2 drives usually run. If you have the requirement to use bare drives without opening your computer, this will do the job. It is definitely more convenient than opening the case and mounting the drive. So if you need to handle multiple naked drives this may be a useful tool for you. For the average user an external drive kit might be a better choice.
Thermaltake Sata HDD USB Docking Station
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