Thermaltake BlacX SATA USB Hard Drive Docking Station Review

Stephen Fung

16 years ago

If I never see another hard drive enclosure, I’ll be a very happy man. It seems that the market is absolutely flooded with these things. The worst part is that nobody seems to be doing anything different with these products; they look all the same! Well, leave it to Thermaltake to do something different. They’ve put a spin on the hard drive enclosure by using an upright docking station design. Although it looks like it will be only a matter of time till the market is flooded with similar products, Thermaltake seems to have done it first. Let’s check it out!

The Thermaltake BlacX SATA USB Hard Drive Docking Station (say that ten times fast) is the breath of fresh air that the market needs. The unit supports both 2.5 and 3.5 inch SATA hard drives and attaches to your computer via the ever pervasive USB connection. With a tool free setup, just dock your chosen hard drive in and you’re ready to roll.

Features and Specifications

The BlacX supports all 2.5” & 3.5” SATA HDDs up to 1TB. With hot-swap support, it makes it easy to switch out drives as needed. The USB 2.0 interface makes the unit extremely compatible and provides 480Mbps of bandwidth. The open design provides great ventilation The BlacX is Windows & Mac OS Compatible out of the box.

What’s In The Box?

The BlacX comes with the dock itself, power adapter, and a USB cable. One of the things that Thermaltake does well is their documentation and it shows in the small, but well illustrated manual.

One of the things that was somewhat surprising was the weight of the dock itself. The weight was substantial enough that I had to do a double take and wonder if someone hid rocks in the base. Though there was no rattling, the extra weight was welcome as it will keep the dock firmly planted on your desk.

First Impressions

The BlacX stands out as something unique on any desktop. As mentioned, the BlacX works with drives right up to 1 TB in either a 2.5 or 3.5 inch SATA sizes. With the ability to hot swap the drives out, you can have access to all your data without having to fiddle with taking apart your system, or assembling it into a box, or a drive bay, you get the picture. This thing is stupid-simple, easy to work with.

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One thing that I didn’t really fall in love with was the fact that the back of the drive and its sensitive components were all exposed. I can already see butterfingers splashing his/her coffee or water onto the back of the drive as it’s copying an important file. Thermaltake does have a product (BlacX SE part no: N0029USU) with a covered back, but it isn’t as simple as this product. If Thermaltake can just cover up the back side with an extension, they’d be good to go.

The backside of the dock is where you will find the power connector, USB, and main power button. Missing are eSATA and Firewire connections and I feel that without them, it really limits the product’s potential. Luckily, Thermaltake did take that to heart and quietly introduced an eSata capable version known as the ST0005U. Still no covered backside though.

Finally, the ejection button works extremely well. The plastic chosen by Thermaltake is very durable and the drive ejection mechanism worked well all hundred times that I attempted to try and defeat it. Drives popped out and inserted with no problems though I do have to note that a certain level of finger pressure is required and you have to push straight down on it as it doesn’t work as well pushing the button down on an angle.

To the right side of the eject button, you’ll see an indicator for power and drive activity. Blue means power on and red means clickety clicking of the hard drive. I kept trying to push it down because it looked like a button. Maybe in a future revision, they can make it touch sensitive, eliminating the need to switch the dock on from the back.

Setup and Installation

As you may have guessed, setup was a breeze. All you need to do is plugin the power and USB cable, connect it to a computer, drop in a hard drive and hit the power button.

One thing that we did notice is that the opening is built for standard sized 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch hard drives. If you have a single platter drive like the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250 GB hard drive or a slimmer 2.5 inch hard drive, you might notice a gap between the front of the drive and the dock. Our Seagate 250 GB drive was a bit wobbly in the slot compared to the non-wobbly Samsung 250 GB drive. During hevy operation, you can sort of see the drive visibly move in the slack space, which could possibly lead to the connector loosening over time.

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Performance

With all the fun stuff out of the way, we have to take a break and look at the boring benchmarks…

As far as drive performance goes, our single platter Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA drive performed within expectations for a USB connected drive. HD Tune results gave us a maximum transfer rate of 28.6 MB/s with a high average of 28.4 MB/s. Clearly, the drive was not limited by the dock, but rather, the USB interface. The only thing that really sucked was the high 22% CPU utilisation.

To address the weaknesses, which are the high CPU utilisation and the capped performance of the drive on USB, an eSATA and Firewire connection should be made part of the package. As mentioned earlier, Thermaltake did quietly release a part that adds in the eSATA interface, but adding in the Firewire interface would also help out those Mac users as the dock does support the Mac OS and would be beneficial for those users as well.

Final Thoughts

Thermaltake has given us a hard drive experience that is interesting again. With all those boring hard drive enclosures out on the market, I was truly happy to see such an innovative product hit the market. Although the product does have its merits, it does give us room to improve. For example, the addition of an eSATA and a Firewire port would increase performance and provide a real alternative to breaking open the box and having to install a new drive. The other improvement I would make is to just create a mechanism to cover up the back of the drive. This would provide some added “moisture protection” just in case butter fingers is near your computer with that can of pop or cup of coffee.

Overall, the Thermaltake BlacX SATA USB Hard Drive Docking Station is a great product that is both innovative and fully recommended for any user that wants easy access to their data in a truly plug and play fashion. If Thermaltake can make the improvements I’ve suggested and maybe throw in something of their own, they’ll have a real winner on their hands.

Pros