Sort by:
Title (
)
Date (
)
Rating (
)
Popularity (
)
Sites currently sorted by: Title (Z to A)
)
Date (
)
Rating (
)
Popularity (
) Sites currently sorted by: Title (Z to A)
We take a look at Thermaltake's BlacX Duet dual dock, but will all the results sing in harmony or will there be a bad tempo somewhere inside?
Over the last couple months we took on the mission of finding the perfect HDD desktop docking station. The first two products we looked at were low cost units that were only limited by the amount of bandwidth our motherboard was able to provide. After that we moved on to the Thermaltake BlacX 5G, another USB 3.0 docking station that included some great accessories, an extra long cable that made moving our test system from under the desk less painful and was also able to deliver amazing performance. Now that we've seen the best USB 3.0 has to offer, a new docking station has taken over our test bench. The Thermaltake BlacX Duet forgoes USB 3.0 entirely and sticks to a tried and true eSATA / USB 2.0 combination, but that's not what the duo in Duet is about.
The BlacX Duet we have on hand today is the third in the BlacX series of hard drive docking stations from Thermaltake. We first saw the BlacX at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show and got our hands on a review sample a month later. We came away from that review very impressed with the concept and implementation, although USB-only transfer left us wanting more. The second coming of the BlacX, dubbed the SE version, featured a 4-port USB hub but still failed to deliver eSATA transfer capability. With the latest release of the BlacX, Thermaltake has done away with the 4-port USB hub, added a second slot that allows for two drives to be mounted simultaneously and finally added eSATA compatibility. This is looking more like the BlacX we hoped for nearly two years ago.
The Thermaltake BlacX Duet is a budget friendly dual drive SATA HDD docking station that provides fast, convenient access to 2.5” or 3.5" SATA or SATA II (SATA /300) hard drive contents through either USB or eSATA connections. The best part about this product is that you never need to open a computer case or mount hard drives in an enclosure.
When we reviewed the original Thermaltake BlacX back in April 2008, we commended Thermaltake for marketing such an innovative and convenient product, but we complained about its lack of essential features such as eSATA. The idea of allowing users to quickly swap internal hard drives on an external interface on-the-fly is undoubtedly excellent, but execution could definitely use some improvement.
If you have multiple hard drives, are a computer technician, or find yourslef constantly installing and uninstalling hard drives then you need to read our review of the improved BlacX Duet. With room to install 2 hard drives simultaneously and swap either at the push of a button the BlacX Duet should find a home on your desk and we tell you why.
The BlacX Duet is a very simple yet effective product for quickly accessing data on any two hard drives. And when I say any two drives, I mean it in a literal sense. The docking station supports all 2.5” and 3.5” SATA drives up to 2TB, so the chances of incompatibility with any current drives you have are slim to none. Furthermore, installation is completely tool-free and the absence of fans allow for silent operation.
Storage
Cloning hard drives with the USB 2.0 interface is slower than I would like, but the ease with which I'm able to insert and remove multiple drives more than makes up for this. I find the Thermaltake BlacX Duet dual hard drive docking station to be so useful that when I upgrade my system, SATA port multiplication will be one of the must have features of my next motherboard.
BlacX Duet is an external hard drive docking station that allows you to connect up to two hard disk drives externally to the PC by just inserting them on the available slots.
With dual bay and hot swap capabilities we test the BlacX Duet 5G from Thermaltake and see how it performs.
execution time : 0.110 sec