Thermaltake BlacX Duet Black Dual Hard Drives Docking Station

Comment:
This thing is great !! Formatted 4TB of storage in 4 hours connected with the USB cable. After crawling behind my tower and realizing I don't even have an eSata port on my motherboard ( I could have swore I did ), I am now looking for a pci-e card that will assistance port multiplying. I have no clue where to start. Thermaltake demands to make a unit that holds 4 drives. I really like this unit for the sole purpose of swapping out 2TB drives without having ever opening your situation yet again. I have bought many 2TB drives from newegg and I am out of room in my situation.If any individual knows of a great port multiplier, pont me in the appropriate direction. I would like to be in a position to move files in between drives with a SATA cable, but USB will do for now.

Comment:
As constantly, Thermaltake's attention to detail tends to make this docking station even cooler than I imagined it. The person activity LED's for every drive, power on/off button, single eSATA OR single USB two. support, and sleek design all make this a fantastic purchase for me. I love the Plug 'n Play considering that you can pop these babies in out and while they're operating! I know it's cuz of SATA, but it's nonetheless fairly cool with an internal drive even though outdoors of the case! The drives slide in nice and uncomplicated, so none of that nasty scraping from sliding internals in and out of metal brackets, very effectively put with each other and balanced (it kinda looks like it ought to fall over doesn't it). Strangely, the only complaint is a 'Thermal' situation from a Thermaltake item which is quite strange indeed. These drives run EXTEREMELY hot, I can really feel the heat coming off of them just by standing them, and I can't touch the drive for longer than 1 or 2 seconds ahead of it begins to burn. This seems dangerous for the drives, and possibly even a fire hazard. In order to lower the price tag did they remove the technologies which keeps the internal SATA drives cool or is there yet another reason why these are burning up? None of my other 11 externals are even close to that temperature. I was so concerned that I place the two new 2 TB drives I got inside my situation, and pulled out my two oldest ƒ+ years), smallest 鸴 GB) drives to place in the Docking Station. Until I feel confident the heat's not an issue, I nevertheless haven't taken the 2nd Station out of its box This tiny device was an incredible find for me and it's working just as nicely as I had hoped it would. With a Windows Residence Server that currently had 8 Internals (using all 8 SATA's) and 11 externals ƒ eSATA, 1 IEEE1394, 8 USB) when my WHS needed a lot more space, I was dreading spending extra dollars on an external (instead of a less costly internal), sucking up 2 additional USB slots (or being forced to use a splitter) along with 4 additional cables, 2 much more power slots, and even more wasted space. Thanks to this though, I could buy two less expensive two TB drives, and only have to use 1 USB (the 1 eSATA assistance wasn't operating on my motherboard, but I currently have other eSATA drives). As often, Thermaltake pays focus to all the tiny details that make their goods stand out, but possessing 'Thermal' issues with a Thermaltake device seems a bit odd...is any individual else seeing these hot drives?

Comment:
two drives, a single cable, easy to access power button, solid create. drives will power down when idle after whatever time you want if you set this in windows power alternatives. initially would not recognize both drives (even with port multiplier support) - i had to power cycle every little thing about 5 instances and start out the unit with one particular drive in every single slot separately ahead of both drives had been recognized. This was purely a hardware issue, it just started working spontaneously without having altering any computer software or drivers. also drives get actually hot - 7200rpm operating at 52C. Making use of this with a startech expresscard esata with port multiplier and working nicely now. Even so the initial difficulty seeing both drives was disconcerting and reflects some style flaw with this unit. For those who cant use each drives together and DO have port multiplier help on your esata card, hold attempting for awhile and it may well start off operating as it did for me.

Comment:
Good product never stoped working so far. only con is the esata cable included is a bit short but other then that this is a great product for the price.

Comment:
Feels a small flimsy compared to the single BlacX-not very as heavy. Nonetheless, the much wider base suggests its not a true concern. I choose the power button on the prime. Over USB, it appears each drives will need to be dismounted at the same time.

Comment:
Worked as it was suppose to proper out of the box. Helped to retrieve information off a malfunction external drive. None

Comment:
Can't say, only had it three days and utilised it 3 hours. Clearly can't rely upon this for my workplace data and employee information. Not recognized right after working with it 3x for a total of about three hours.Now have to pay shipping for warranty. I'm back to circumstances only for Thermaltake. Manufacturer Response:enduser6598,We are sorry for this inconvenience. If the unit is inside the initially 30 days of acquire then Thermaltake will pay for shipping both approaches.Please speak to ttsupport@thermaltakeusa.com for far more details.Thermal Customer Service

Comment:
I've had this for awhile now, and though I wish that I could have the usb 3.0 version of this. After 3-4 external enclosures this has been the best thing yet. It has performed admirably and is really worth the price. Since the drives are literally treated like flash drives, it is beyond convenient, drives also stay cool as it is not locked up in enclosure.

Comment:
Worked with 1 of the slots ahead of it died...Looks cool Two words: EPIC FAILSave oneself a headache and select an additional brand.Im on my second unit and each doesn't perform in its personal way. You have to pay for return shipping below their warranty have enjoyable...

Comment:
Two drives (EVEN IN eSATA! You have to turn on port multiplier in bios for these complaining about 1 drive only in eSATA mode). Ease of inserting and removing drives. Mine, I'm not confident about other folks, unmounts the second drive as properly as the initially when ejecting one particular. I don't care for that. Other than that the device operates as advertised, as long as you know what you're undertaking just before generating erroneous assessment statements. I consider I'd wait for Gen two, if you're hunting at this. The limitation of 2TB, the unmounting of the second drive when ejecting 1 drive ...annoying.It works, but has it's troubles.

Comment:
It is great to be in a position to use additional than 1 HDD externally and this works well for that process. I don't care that substantially about speed. Not the fastest information transfer, but it functions. This is uncomplicated to use and just works. I essentially have 2 of these docks. The only difficulty now is having adequate spare drives to use each.

Comment:
Works as described, either with USB or eSATA, but with eSATA you need a mobo that can "see" a lot more than one particular drive or obtain an eSATA card and install the pilot. I consider the appropriate term is "port multiplier"That is if you use two external docking stations, as i do. If you place two SATA drives in the docking station and use the USB connection, your pc will see the two drives.If you use the eSATA connection, the docking station sees only 1 drive, so i had to take an egg off for that. I have the duet (with two slots) and an additional blackX docking station with only one particular slot.Nowadays, six months later, i purchased one more duet from newegg.I use these docking stations continually since i use distinct operating systems and i discovered the Windows 7 multiboot possibilities to be incapable of handling my hardware scenario right after several quite a few tries and a couple of fried SATA drives.Currently i surf and download with Linux Ubuntu and function and play with Windows.

Comment:
The idea is excellent. A several bay docking station for difficult drives. Hot swappable and all that. It's total junk. All the talk of the power turning off and on is entirely correct. I started a transfer of 14.5GB of information more than 30 minutes ago and as I write this, my laptop or computer will freeze up occasionally as the hard drives power down. The count is at an hour and 5 minutes remaining. Undertaking a drive to drive transfer with the two docked drives is impossible. I've wasted ฮ. Do I believe this is just a faulty drive? No, there have been too numerous reports of the identical issues for it to just be a glitch. Manufacturer Response:Dear Consumer,We at Thermaltake apologize for the inconvenience this could have caused you. Please contact ttsupport@thermaltakeusa.com for warranty service.Best regards,

Comment:
Related construction to the single version, but power switch is on top rated, creating it less difficult to turn on. Cleaner that two singles and less difficult to copy. Far better documentation on which storage controllers this unit is compatible with would have been a plus. My biggest question was: does my motherboard help port multilplier so that esata sees each drives? The answer: yes. The essential factor to appear at is the esata controller. Mine was JMicron and the drivers were JMB36X. On the other hand, I needed to download the most current drivers from JMicrons site, prior to I could see both drives. When I did that, I noticed the method no longer "hangs" although hot plugging, and the add/remove hardware icon offers a more detailed description of the drives in the docking station. My second question was, will copying from one drive to a different on the exact same station offer the very same speed as two single stations on two separate esata ports?...yes! Even a bit faster in my basic experiment.

Comment:
Nice to have in-case you want to pull data off someones hd. Can use 2 sata hard drives simultaneously.

Comment:
I love this unit so much I don't think I would ever buy any other docking station. It's also frequently on sale too. Absolutely flawless so far.

Comment:
Purchased it to use with my Gateway FX 68XX series laptop (eSATA.) Worked perfectly right out of the box. Solid design. Help for 2.five and 3.five SATA drives. Laptop supported both drives (port multiplier). Comes with USB and eSATA cables. If you have many SATA drives this is certainly the way to go. Wall wart power provide. Purchased this at a brick and mortar right after acquiring an eSATA enclosure that didn't function with my laptop. It was on sale so I got a very good deal. Haven't attempted USB but but I'd assume it functions fine. I do repairs and data recovery for a small organization and this is going to make operate a breeze.

Comment:
USB works effectively but painfully slow. Drivers had matters but finally Windows 7 identified them appropriately. SATA only functions properly on computers that assistance a port multiplier. Generally if you plug the unit into one particular that doesn't the unit only sees 1 of the drives not both. Don't get this unit if you want to be in a position to copy files across two drives at high speeds.

Comment:
Solid heavy construction, so no worry of falling over. Fantastic appear with blue LED. the energy button is extremely sensitive so it's effortless to double press. would be excellent to have usb 3. for this cost

Comment:
I bought these to diag or transfer data on customers hard drivers without having a dedicated computer for repairs and it does exactly what I wanted. This review was modfied by poster @ 01-20-12 02:05 PM

Comment:
More than 6 months of waiting, this guy finally went on sale. I got it for $49.99 - $10 IR - $20 MIR (Still waiting for my AMEX GC). Not so bad as I always needed this to make my data transfer easier. The newer version supports USB 3.0 but price+. For now, if I need speed, I would go for eSATA of this Dock.

Comment:
1) eSATA or USBtwo) Easily swap drives 1) Picky eSATA support2) 110MB/sec limittwo) Using two drives at once doesn't function like it ought toI read the testimonials and did my analysis to see if my SATA controllers supported port multiplier ahead of acquiring this, and they do. My MB makes use of an Intel P55 chipset with 6 internal SATA ports on the Intel chip, and it also has a JMicron JMB363룚 controller, two internal for RAID and 1 external.At initial I couldn't get the thing to recognize two drives at the identical time. Often it would only see the drive in port 1, sometimes none at all. I tried all 6 ports on the Intel controller and the 2 internal ports of the JMicron controller. I was about to give up, when I finally got it to function.I had been powering the dock on with both drives already in, when practically by accident I discovered that it will ONLY see both drives if you insert them one at a time. On the other hand, inserting a 2nd drive whilst one is already in causes the 1st 1 to disconnect for a second. That's a poor design IMO. I have the single port eSATA/USB Thermaltake dock and it works great. I use my old SATA drive from my previous method to do backups with. It's obtaining full even although I nevertheless have a lot of space on my program HD ƑTB WD Black). I was about to purchase a new drive for backups, but picked up a 1.5TB WD Black on sale here at NewEgg instead. I replaced the 1TB internal drive with the new 1.5TB drive, and I'm now using the 1TB drive as my backup drive.I applied the dock to test the new drive just before employing it, and did a benchmark too. In the dock it maxes out at 110MB/sec, but once I put it in the case, it does 160MB/sec.My program was to put the old single drive dock on my HTPC and use the old backup drive to copy some Television shows to my PC to clear up a little room from its drive.If I had identified that the dual dock was going to operate this way, I would have gone with an additional single dock. I may possibly just keep it anyway simply because the power button is on the front instead of in the back like the single d

Comment:
eSATA works excellent for a single drive (my computer doesn't assistance eSATA multiplexing). Disks do not spin down when connected through USB in Linux.7200 RPM drive gets quite hot. I initially utilised the eSATA connection to connect to a Linux machine, and it worked great for a single drive (my personal computer doesn't assistance eSATA multiplexing). When I got one more drive, I switched to a USB connection. When utilizing USB, the disks do not spin down, even when issuing a hdparm command to spin them down.The enclosure is made of plastic, so it does practically nothing to assist dissipate the heat generated by the drives.

Comment:
Superb style and performance so far. supports win7, eSATA, USB II, upto two* 2T SATA HDD. Supports port-multiplier as long as your system has the function. I was searching for a dock for employing my Samsung internal HDD 2T. This dock meets all my demands in such a straightforward and quick manner. None so far. This is my second docking station and very first open box obtain from Newegg. I am content with this order; fairly impressed with double box and bubble wrap protected package. Nicely packed, great item. Thanks Newegg.

Comment:
I required to "diskpart clean all" a pile of drives. This makes that really straightforward.USB and ESATA assistance operates. Not actually a CON but one thing men and women want to realize: you need to have port multiplier support on your esata port to use both bays. The in-box drivers that ship with windows will not do it. You need to have the driver from your motherboard or chip-set vendor. Acquiring this to work on a Gigabyte X58A-UD3R was a enormous PITA. The drivers provided by Gigabyte were buggy and hung on shutdown. The board nonetheless crashes if you hot swap sufficient times. Not a difficulty with this device though. Just be conscious: port multipliers can be troublesome.To the reviewer below who says enabling and disabling a device is how you get hot swapping to perform clearly doesn't get the POINT of HOT swapping.