Turn any Serial ATA hard drive into an external USB 2.0 storage device in minutes with the Thermaltake BlacX N0028USU hard drive docking station. The dock supports all 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch SATA hard disk drives up to 2 TB and offers USB2.0 transfer speeds up to 480 Mbps. Installation requires no screws or tools whatsoever.The Thermaltake BlacX (N0028USU) supports USB2.0 data transfer speeds up to 480Mbpos, requires no drivers, and is Windows Vista and Apple Mac compatible.First a big thank you to Thermaltake for providing the BlacX Duet Docking Station for this Review.Gamemon Ft8d91 Driver Windows 7 Ultimate Sp1 Usb 3.0 Valkyria Chronicles Ps3 Iso Thermaltake Blacx Driver Arma 2 German Johnny Nash I Can See Clearly Now Download Need For Speed Most Wanted 2005 Download Key Ppsspp Controller Android Starsat 2000 Hyper Software 2019 Justin Bieber As Long As Love Me Mp3 Song DownloadCar Mechanic Simulator 2018 - Dodge DLC Download For Mac Dub Dash Download For Mac Imac Applications Circuit Maker Software Full Version Free Download Broken Sword Mac Download Tomb Raider Para Pc Download Thermaltake Blacx Duet Driver Windows 10 Stick Rpg 2 Directors Cut Free Full MacA while ago I had the chance to Review the BlacX hard drive dock and was pretty impressed with it, today I take a look at the BlacX Duet hard drive dock and see what it has to offer over the BlacX.Before I get too far into this Review I should mention the features of the BlacX Duet and they are the following.-Transfer Rate: eSATA: up to 3Gbps, USB 2.0: up to 480Mbps-HDD Capacity: All 2.5” or 3.5” SATA HDD up to 2TB (per slot)-OS Compatible: Windows 7 / Vista / XP / 2003 / 2000, Mac 10.3 and later-Power: Input: 100-240V / 50-60Hz Output: 12V / 2A-Dimension: 140 (W) 120.82 (D) x 69.49 (H) mm 5.51 (W) x 4.76 (D) x 2.74 (H) in-Accessory: eSATA Cable, USB 2.0 Cable, Power Adaptor-Copy & Transfer data between Hard Drives & Computers-Hot-Swap Capability for Rapid Multi HDDs Access & Exchange-Compact Docking Station Design maximizes Heat Dissipation & Exhaust-Supports eSATA Transfer Speed up to 3GbpsThe first thing you notice about the BlacX Duet over the BlacX docking station that I previously reviewed here is that, the BlacX Duet comes with two slots in order for it to handle two hard drives at once where the BlacX only has one slot and could only work with one hard drive at a time.The other nice feature of the BlacX Duet is that unlike the BlacX model the BlacX Duet also has an eSATA connection to go along with its USB 2.0 connection. The eSATA connection is what most people will want to use if they want the maximum speed out of their hard drives do to the fact it’s a lot faster than USB 2.0 connection.One issue people may run into while trying to use the eSATA connection is that unless your motherboard supports Port Multiplexing you will only be able to see one of the two drives that are connected to the BlacX Duet when you’re in Windows.Another benefit of the BlacX docks is that you don’t have any heat issues since the drives are not in a confined closed space as you would see with some external drive enclosures.The other nice feature of the BlacX Duet is it supports the hot swapping of hard drives and that means you can swap drives in and out of the dock without rebooting the computer all the time and that’s a good thing.In this next picture you can see that I have the BlacX duet loaded up with a 1TB spindle based hard drive as well as 256 Gig 2.5” SSD. If you look at the left front of the BlacX Duet you can see the switch that turns it off and on. On the switch you also have two blue led lights (one for each drive) that will light up when there is drive activity. Looking off to the right hand side of the drives you’ll see that you have two black eject buttons and these are used to eject the hard drives out of the BlacX Duet. If your motherboard does not support Port Multiplexing you can always fall back to the USB 2.0 connection and with that you can see both drives in the dock however, you will be stuck with USB 2.0 speed instead of the blistering eSATA speed.On the performance side of things, when transferring files from a hard drive in the BlacX Duet to my computer over USB 2.0 I would get a transfer rate of about 30 Megabytes per second. When I switched over to the eSATA connection that transfer rate shot up to about 60 Megabytes per second and that was on a rather slow hard drive.
To be honest, I wasn't really expecting this product to be heading our way, which was a nice surprise when UPS dropped it off at my door. Let's see how it gets its job done, and to what extent it has done well.Our review unit of the Thermaltake BlacX arrived in a large, well constructed corrugated cardboard box from Thermaltake's offices in City of Industry, California via UPS Standard. And that's the Thermaltake BlacX, an HDD docking station. As far as I'm concerned, there's one product in the market that has gained immense popularity and tons of internet hype that allows you to quickly swap internal SATA hard drives without ripping anything apart to get the job done. For example, some users need it for testing hard drives, while others want to quickly pull some data off a drive without installing it in another computer. For an external interface, eSATA is nice and all for its performance, but to an extent that's really an extension of an internal storage medium to external hard drives - hot swap is necessary as what's that made USB so popular, but it doesn't really solve the problem of having a need to go through a bunch of internal SATA hard drives quickly. Thermaltake Blacx Manual Is IncludedA brief, short manual is included as well just in case the user is having problems with the Thermaltake BlacX - while the BlacX is a relatively simple and straightforward product, it never hurts to include a manual, and we definitely appreciate Thermaltake for including one inside.The Thermaltake BlacX, as the name alludes to, is completely black throughout with its plastic construction. Accessories included consist of an AC adapter, as well as a standard printer style USB cable. A small piece of cardboard partitions the interior of the box where the Thermaltake BlacX unit itself is in one section, while accessories are located at the bottom.Out of the box, you will receive a unit of the Thermaltake BlacX HDD docking station itself, packaged in bubble wrap. Four wires connect to the PCB for two LEDs as previously described.Although SATA is a hot swap interface and PATA is not, it would be excellent if Thermaltake somehow incorporates PATA compatibility into the BlacX as well. The simple green PCB facilitates the necessary controllers and components such as the SATA to USB bridge, in which we'll look at in a second. I found that the power button located at the back to be quite odd, because for convenience purposes a well placed button in front would probably be more convenient and can be done without being easily pressed by accident.I was actually quite surprised that Thermaltake didn't use eSATA in addition to the standard USB connection, since eSATA would provide much better drive performance compared to USB alone.Four standoffs are placed at the bottom of the Thermaltake BlacX, along with two screws to allow easily disassembly of the product.Removing the cover of the Thermaltake BlacX reveals two primary components inside the docking station - of which one is a PCB, and the second is a large metal weight. Quite an interesting design in my opinion to have the ability to accommodate hard disk drives of both sizes.A possible drawback is that the Thermaltake BlacX does not have any cooling capabilities for the docked hard drive, which can run fairly warm under load or over extended periods of time.The back of the Thermaltake BlacX HDD docking station is relatively simple with only three things - a power button, DC input, and USB connector to hook it up to your computer. Located at an angle to the right of the eject button is an oval, opaque center shape with seam openings on the side to accommodate LEDs on either side - the blue power LED on the left, and a red blinking activity LED on the right.A spring held push-down cover is at the top with a gap opening at the top left corner to securely accommodate 2.5" SATA HDD in a vertical position, while standard 3.5" desktop hard drives are inserted with the door pressed down. The clean design with fine lines are completed with a small 'BlacX' logo on front center, with the Thermaltake logo and slogan at the bottom right corner in front.Along the top center edge in front is a finger-sized mechanical eject button, for ejecting the docked hard drive. We'll examine the performance of this chip in combination with our hard disk in just a moment.Our Thermaltake BlacX in action, with docked hard drive for our performance tests. Additionally, it keeps the Thermaltake BlacX securely on the desk - we can see more than just a couple benefits for this implementation.The black iron weight is held to the BlacX by two additional independent screws in addition to the main cover passthrough screws.Thermaltake uses an Initio INIC-1606L SATA to USB bridge to support SATA hard drives over USB. There may be physical limitations, but the engineering and designers have their jobs, right?ESATA interface would also be nice since the BlacX takes SATA hard drives only, and this would be simply a matter of adding a connector and that's pretty much it.For the large black iron weight, it weighs down the Thermaltake BlacX for a lower center of gravity and prevents the vertically docked hard drive from falling over easily. Of course, it hasn't, so we aren't too worried.As you can see in our HDTach results above, the performance is held back by the limits of USB 2.0 only - otherwise the Western Digital AAKS hard drive had a sustained transfer rate beyond maximum USB 2.0 throughout (As compared to maximum SATA performance). Unless, of course, it has been recorded that the performance of the drive controllers on BlacX is poor, then we'll investigate further. The reason behind this is the influence of USB is not quite relevant to drive I/O performance - it is quite limited to the hard drive itself, and that the technology of USB is limiting the sustained transfer rate - and we are not reviewing the hard drive itself today. Our motherboard has Intel's ICH9R Southbridge controlling the USB ports, one of the best USB controllers currently available.In our tests today, we won't get into performance analysis of multiple file writes and multiple file reads as we've done previously in our storage reviews. Ereader app for macMinor things include the placement of the power button, and maybe something to physically block the ejection of hard drives when it is turned on. From its excellent design to great USB performance, there are things to look into that they can fix. The Thermaltake BlacX not only puts an excellent idea into action, but it also implements it very well.
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