Thermaltake 5G 5.0Gbps USB 3.0 SATA Hard Drive Docking Station with Hard Drive Pouch ST0019U

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5 x 3 x 7 inches ; 1.5 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B003ZUXXVU
• Item model number: ST0019U

By : Thermaltake
List Price : $60.00
Price : $48.23
You Save : $11.77 (20%)

Product Description

Supports USB 3.0 SuperSpeed - Maximum Transfer Rate up to 5.0 Gbps. Backward-Compatible with USB 2.0 (Max: 480 Mbps) ; 1.1 (Max: 12 Mbps). Premium Shielded USB 3.0 Cable - Corrosion Resistant Plating ; Heavy Gauge Wires for Years of Reliable Use. .

Technical Details

• Supports 2.5" ; 3.5" SATA I/II/3.0 ; SSD Hard Drives up to 2 TB.
• Hot-Swap Capability for Rapid Multi HDDs Access ; Exchange
• Supports SATA-III (6 Gbps) Hard Drives with maximum speed up to 5 Gbps (maximum theoretical speed offered by USB 3.0)
• Windows 7 - 32 ; 64-bit Ready !
• Windows ; Mac OS Compatible.

Customer Reviews

I've owned the USB 2.0 / Esata version of the Thermaltake Hard drive dock for about 3 years. It's hands down the single most useful computer peripheral I've ever owned. It makes backing up your system, cloning hard drives, and diagnosing problems with hard disks not just easy but enjoyable. Thermaltake knows how to make a dock, and my USB 2.0 dock still works perfectly 3 years later and I expect this one to be just as reliable. I purchased this dock to use with my new computer which supports USB 3.0, since USB 3.0 is currently as fast or faster than Esata, and while it's not much faster now, as drivers improve it will far surpass it.
The 5gbps speed that Thermaltake quotes is pretty theoretical at this point. With two extremely fast SATA 6Gbs drives you might get somewhere close, but with standard 7200rpm drives or even most SSDs, your throughput is going to be limited by the disk, not the USB standard. However, what you do gain is everyday speed, that make backing up to external drives 3-4x faster. Since I already have a Thermaltake USB 2.0 dock, I decided to compare the two and give you an idea of what you'll gain in speed using this dock vs. the old one.
For the test I used a Samsung 500 GB Hard Drive. I tested the transfer of a large collection of media files ranging from 3-4mb mp3 files to 8Gb .MKV BlueRay rips. The total transfer size was 104GBs. The source drive was another Samsung F3 drive, but 1TB in size. My motherboard is the Asus P6X58-E, which features two USB 3.0 ports. This test was not scientific, but it should give you a general idea of the speed difference.
Here are the results:
USB 2.0 docking station
Total Transfer time: 98 Minutes
Max transfer speed: 21.4Mbs
USB 3.0 docking station
Total Transfer time: 41 Minutes
Max transfer speed: 74Mbs
As you can see, the USB 3.0 dock performed the same transfer in less than half the time as the USB 2.0 dock. Keep in mind that USB 3.0 drivers will only improve with time--I expect those speeds to increase steadily along with improved drivers. If you want another solid example of the difference in speed, check the comments where I left a link to a youtube video where a guy compares USB 2.0, USB 3.0, Esata, and Firewire. It's pretty informative.
Aesthetically Thermaltake has upped the 'sexy' factor with polished surfaces, and rounder edges than the old dock. I actually prefer the look of the older one--not everything needs to have polished surfaces! They just attract finger prints. This is a computer tool, not an iPod.
The package includes:
1) The Dock itself
2) USB 3.0 cable
3) Slip covers for hard drives (1x 3.5" size and 1x 2.5" size)
4) AC power adapter
5) Instruction booklet
Conclusions:
A great, great dock. Much more versatile than a fixed form (2.5 or 3.5 inch) enclosure, it allows you to use a wide variety of disks in different circumstances without sacrificing speed. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's well worth the asking price.

MacBook Pro 17" i7 2.2ghz Quad Core(Early 2011)
1. Plugged per in to BLACX 5G, plugged USB cable from BLACX 5G to MBP (MacBook Pro). Plugged Samsung 1TB 7200RPM
drive into the BLACX 5G Dock and powered up dock. System recognized it fine, hard drive needed formatting for OSX
to use it so a message appeared stating that the drive wasn't usable but was recognized and asked me what to do with
it. Told it to mount it anyways, then went into disk utility and formatted to my liking for back uses with Time Machine.
2. Transferred 138.29 GB through the USB 2.0 port on the MBP. Estimated time about an hour.
- Files copied correctly with no errors
3. Plugged the CalDigit SuperSpeed 2 Port USB 3.0 Card into the MBP (with no external power, only the MBP's expresscard power).
Downloaded install files from CalDigit's website for MBP's with the new Thunderbolt port(early 2011 and later).
4. After computer rebooted from driver install, I transferred a 280GB file over to the hard drive, finished after
about 25-30 min no errors no problems.
5. Ran system test on the hard drive transfer rate speed (using AJA System Test), ran at 138.5 MB/s write, and close by on read (136 MB/s maybe).
Tested external drive (same RPM) through firewire 800 (LaCie rugged, early 2011), ran at 76.0 MB/s write and 85.5 MB/s on read.
My conclusion so far is that both of these products run very well on a MacBook Pro, it has been no more than 24 hours but I have
used the external Samsung drive in the BLACX 5G dock to edit recording sessions and bounce many files from the same session ("bouncing" is
like exporting, only your exporting multiple audio tracks as a single audio file). Spent hours on it and it ran perfectly fine, in fact I
had no "hard drive cant read the disk fast enough" error messages like I would normalizing on a session of this size. Makes my life easier.
I have read many reviews saying the dock may die after a few months, though I'm not worried about it. Seems to be stable now and
has a manufacturer's warranty.

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