Thermaltake BlacX Duet Black Dual Hard Drives Docking Station

Comment:
purchased a second one because of the price,great docking station not su

Comment:
Performs effectively. Straightforward to set up, goog indications of which drive is which. Can't have two drive insterted, but only turn one particular on. Not a major con. Rebate in no way came. Attempting to get a hold of the business to see what occurred. If you strategy on purchasing this item, acquire it for the value listed, not the rebate cost.

Comment:
Great for back-ups. Comes with each eSata and USB cables. Plug-n-Play employing eSata with my new Win7 64-bit machine. None so far. I essentially personal two of the BlacX single-bay USB units for additional than a year. They are ideal for back-ups and disk image generating. I am puzzled by some of the unfavorable comments below. I have been employing three.five WD Green drives ƑTB+) with no heating problems. You have to format new drives prior to you can shop to them. For a 1 TB drive it can take many hours.

Comment:
N/A I exchanged my initially one particular mainly because it was DOA. My second 1 has lasted a handful of months but really unreliable. It never recognizes far more than one drive at a time. And yes, I was connected to ESATA.

Comment:
Operates as advertised. I don't have to obtain DVD+Rs anymore; one tricky drives requires care of at least two 100 DVD cakeboxes and I don't have to worry about my data rotting away. And I can encrypt my data substantially more simply than I could with DVDs. Only con is the single drive BlacX I had prior permitted me to just pop in and out a challenging drive with out turning the power off to the drive. With this 1 I have to cut the power when I swap otherwise Windows doesn't see it. Thermaltake has just created a industry for small plastic protective situations to shop my drives away in. Ideal now I just store the tough drives in the anti-static bag but I'm sure a much better answer is out there which is also low cost.

Comment:
Operates well with eSATA after I upgraded the drivers for my JMicron Controller. Transfers are as quick as my internal discs. Drives should be removed at the same time. You can\'t hot plug one drive at a time. Though you won't do any harm to the drive, Windows will not see a new drive till the docking station is rebooted. Also, the warning stating that the port multiplication function ought to be supported by your SATA controller is on a card inside the box instead of on the back of the box where you can see it prior to acquire. Make sure your drivers are up to date and help port multiplication. The reality that the ports are exposed although the 2.5" drive cutouts is a slight bit regarding. A double flap on the opening would be perfect.I'm working with an Asus P5B-Deluxe with a JMicron JMB363 Controller running Windows 7. I have not tested USB functionality extremely completely.

Comment:
seems like a great thought with 2 drive bays -hot swapable,will work with 2.5 and 3.five" drives this is a poor item .if you place two drives in it the eSATA does not work in most situations,the drives overheat(I don't know how when they are exposed) and the energy to the unit will drop off every single so frequently without having warning and then come back on following a minute or two.performs fine with just a single drive set up. I have RMA'ed this unit 2x now and it nevertheless has the very same issues.Do your self a favor and opt for one more selection .vThis thing has the similar dilemma for two.5" and three.five" drives or a mixture of the two.If it worked excellent it would be a good unit but it don't.I purchased it when it was nevertheless 2x the value it is now.for the existing value it would be a good deal and you could just use it for 1 drive at a time.

Comment:
Awesome style and ergonomics. Heavy metal piece inside to weigh dock down. Great for motherboards and pci, pci-e sata cards with esata connections and port multiplier ability on them. Overheats the drives, no fan built in. Quite loose esata connection that can pull out. Can be extremely confusing for newbies who have an esata port and dont know what port multiplier signifies (you can have one particular port to a device that enables lots of drives to talk and switch on that 1 cable).this need to have an 80mm fan clip on region on the side, so you can get a Ŭ fan and save 赨-400 in tricky drives that otherwise will overheat and die. I added a 12v .15A 80mm fan to the power cable, red going to the black aspect of the cable, and black going to the grey-black striped side. opened it and drilled two holes on the side to screw in a standard 80mm fan. I then added that fan to the power, and voila, a perfectly cool program.Had I not completed this, it would have overheated my 3.five" sata drives and I could have lost 赨-400 not to mention my data which is needed.

Comment:
It operates.Port multiplier on the eSATA side works with my computar machines. (Intel ICH10R, and JMicron/Gigabyte sata chips) It is too uncomplicated to bump the energy switch. It shuts the disks off as quickly as you touch it. It would be better to have some travel in the switch.The included cables aren't too fantastic. Each cables are only 3 feet lengthy. The eSATA cable is a flat, unflexible abomination. The cable is so stiff that disturbing it will slide the device about on the desk.Possibly this device is too old to ask for this but an esatap connector would be real good and would eradicate the power brick. I hope I get my rebate. I submitted it along with two others which the processor acknowledged by way of email.

Comment:
- eSATA & USB two. connections - Came with each interface cables (short even though) - Can dock & access two SATA HDDs (either 2.five" or 3.five") ONLY when working with the slower USB2. interface. - Would be great if Thermaltake posted their small white-insert in the box on the web page concerning the port-multiplier situation when utilizing the the eSATA interface. My ten-month old Dell XPS 730 H2C running Vista Ultimate apparently doesn't have the port-multiplier feature on the built-in eSATA port so it only detects one particular SATA HDD (HDD1). Updated to the most current BIOS & SATA controller drivers and had the similar disappointing outcome. Yes, of program I want 3. Gbps transfer speed! - Does not have any type of cooling fans to support additional dissipate any heat make-up. - No additional drivers required - Enable the eSATA feature in the BIOS for it to detect the docked HDD - Can't use each cables at the very same time. Manufacturer Response:Dear CrlMac1,Thank you for your feedback.Unfortunately yes, in order to take benefit of the dual bay function by means of eSATA interface, the host technique will demand Port Multiplier enabled eSATA controller. While majority of nowadays's Computer with eSATA has the function present, we comprehend that a smaller portion of systems might not have it. We have updated the website to reflect what is already on the item packaging for user to examine prior to obtain. All of the USB controllers have the Port Multiplier function enabled.Must anybody have questions on no matter if their eSATA controller has the stated Port Multiplier function, please speak to either the motherboard or controller card suppliers. Thank you.Thermaltake Client Service

Comment:
Unimporant, presumably a excellent idea if the item worked. I bought this item directly from Thermaltake. When it arrived, I placed two two.5in HHDs into the slots to read data from them. The dock did not seem to be reading them effectively, so I removed the drives and placed in a single 3.5in HDD. This also failed to read. I contacted Thermaltake support instantly with regards to the concern, and they did not respond.Right after this, I turned off the unit and attempted to pull out the 3.5in HDD and was BURNED by it. All 3 of the challenging drives I place into this item were broken soon after getting come into speak to with it. A solid fifteen days following I contacted Thermaltake, I sent a second message indicating that the product was broken and I had however to get any reply for the initial message. Once again, I was fully ignored. More than 1 month later, I ultimately decided I would not stand for getting my personal possessions broken by this absolutely worthless device and sent them a final message indicating that I sent a request to my credit card firm to have the charges for this item removed. (I have due to the fact received a complete refund by means of my credit card firm). I have also forwarded all of the messages I sent to them - and the single one particular I received - to the Far better Organization Bureau. Finally, soon after becoming told they were going to be forced to refund my money, they sent me a message Right away claiming that my other two messages were lost. They expected me to pay return shipping for the product in order to acquire a new one particular when they sent me a broken a single to start with. If any individual desires me to post a copy of the messages sent among Thermaltake and myself concerning this situation, I'd be pleased to do so. The behavior of this corporation - sending obviously untested and defective items and refusing to help them - is unacceptable.

Comment:
Excellent hdd enclosure. Works well. Reliable. Fast. All great.

Comment:
This item functions wonderful and lets you access 2 drives at when by a single connection... as long as your method meets its specifications. Making use of it more than USB will constantly show 2 drives, nonetheless, your eSATA port need to have a port multiplier function. This isn't a huge deal, b/c you can add 1 of these cards to an empty PCI slot for really little income. I did just that, b/c the eSATA port on my Dell Studio XPS 435MT was not seeing both drives. I ordered the iStarUSA RAID-SIL3132-2ES PCIe x1 SATA II Dual Ports eSATA Port Multiplier RAID Controller from NewEgg for about half the expense of 1 of my 1TB drives, and now it operates good. It sees each drives and functions precisely as it does over USB... only a lot more quickly. Not the fault of the product, but if you expect to see two drives more than eSATA make certain your hardware supports port replication. If not, for a handful of bucks you can add on this variety of port. I did my research, and knew this before ordering, so I was ready to commit a handful of more bucks to make it operate if I had to.

Comment:
I bought this to use with a 2TB 7200rpm hard drive. Most of the external hard drives are slow and have a sleep mode which makes my 9242 receiver slow right down when I want to access my recordings. Anyways hooked this up and everything is fast and efficient and when this drive fills up, it's a simple matter of replacing it.

Comment:
This unit working good. This kind of tool must have ide port. Not bad for this price (pm)

Comment:
Bought this for the many hard drives that I have lying around. Works great at transferring files from drive to drive. I only use it for short periods of time though, never have it on for more than an hour at a time.

Comment:
I made a review a few months back ... can't locate it though. Anyway I was having USB drops and disc corruption while using Linux ... oddly this didn't happen using WinXP. But I did contact the manufacturer and they mentioned that: "Maybe the PCB/controller board is defective." They also mentioned that they had tested it with Ubuntu 11.04 and 11.10 and it worked well. So I RMA'd the unit and got the replacement unit. The replacement works correctly. So now I am happy. Plus the support person at Thermaltake was very polite and helpful. Kudos to them!

Comment:
Two bays is good. Thermaltake fails to inform purchaser on packaging of need to have for port multiplier for dual drive compatibility. The box states: "Read & Write two Hard Drives simultaneously." It also states: "Rapid Data Access & Exchange w Single eSATA or USB Cable Connection." NOWHERE does it even mention that you really should verify to see if you have port multiplier capability (which is completely required to run two drives more than one particular eSATA cable). Thermaltake Response to port-multipliers in this evaluation thread: "we comprehend that a little portion of systems might not have it"Um... at this point, I'd say MOST systems DON'T have port multipliers. I'm utilizing a Dell Precision M4400 with the PM45 chipset. It does NOT assistance port-multiplying. One of the couple of chipsets that does is ICH9R, but once again, this is a single of the Handful of.

Comment:
I was first excited to get this dual dock because I had to transfer massive amounts of data between two hard drives but I was disappointed that I required an eSata port multiplier to take advantage of the speeds. So currently I'm getting about max 20 mb/s and average around 14 mb/s dropping lower for smaller files...If you need it rather than using enclosures it's a good product but if you were intending on using super speed transfers you'll want a port multiplier or USB 3.0...Should have done more research but I suppose it's low risk at $20.00 with MIR. Looks like the rebate is an American Express gift card?

Comment:
seems to be good product for troubleshooting etcwould be handy if they supplied an esata cable since USB connection limits the drive to about 40mb/s

Comment:
Up to 2TB capability, quiet no fans, rapidly tough drive swap, just plug and play. This unit calls for the host (computer method) to have Port Multiplier function on the eSATA (external SATA) port in order to recognize many connected tough disk drives. If not you have to use the slower USB connection. Can't use eSATA instead of USB on my computer system simply because it only recognizes 1 difficult drive. I have a new(just purchased it and updated the bios) dell studio XPS 8000 with windows 7, Intel core i7, 8GB ram but the eSATA need to not have the Port Multiplier function. Man this computer is already out of date.

Comment:
I have used these for years at work. Great quality, THE best docking station!

Comment:
Good functions, properly put with each other. No USB three. (not a huge deal). Will dismount a single drive when another is inserted or removed (USB only, AFAIK). Bad USB-to-SATA controller - consistently hangs up. Frankly, this product suffers from having a very good brand name and fantastic style, though becoming executed as cheaply as achievable (not that we'd know, given that they don't pass these savings along to us). They could spring for much more robust circuits (it's not like these chips are complex or high-priced), but they don't, and we're left with file transfers that hang, films that lag sporadically, and a unsatisfactory item.

Comment:
Installs and operates practically mindlessly rapidly. For the use I intended (drive backups) it seemed to have about a 3 hour reduce off prior to it just shutdown and necessary to be turned off and turned back on (drive count inconsequential it did this with one or 2). USB or esata the final results were the identical. You'll note I nevertheless gave it high marks and mentioned it's excellent in a pinch. I have utilised it to regrab files from the backups (had to make these inside the case *sigh*) that I accidentally zapped off the main drive (thank you VNC for click-delays/overclicking). And in short burst usage it's been fine.I'm acquiring each and every external has it's spot in the sun and it's dirty flaws.

Comment:
I liked the idea of a SATA drive docking station. Certain beats obtaining to install/uninstall from a situation or external enclosure. Rapid and uncomplicated. I ought to have gotten the worst lemon ever. I tried three difficult drives. None would read due to alleged corruption, yet these exact same drives all worked when I cabled them straight to the motherboard. I tried hooking to two distinct computer systems, but got the similar results ("Windows reported corruption"). I tried two various USB cables, very same benefits. And the icing on the cake? Not once, not twice, but 3--count them--3 spontaneous power resets. The Thermaltake name typically stands for quality, but in this situation, I got stuck with a steaming pile of junk that I will be promptly returning. Manufacturer Response:Dear consumer,That may possibly trigger by the defective USB controller chip inside of this unit. We can replace it under the warranty service. Please speak to ttsupport@thermaltakeusa.com for warranty facts.Thank you,