Thermaltake BlacX Duet USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive ST0014U Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Bought the unit for a computer with P7P55D Pro motherboard running Linux (Fedora 12). The system recognized the port multiplier without issues; two disks over eSATA worked out of the box. Tested it with two 500G drives (a Seagate and a WDC). Reading from a single drive gives a decent ~75 MB/s; simultaneous reads from two drives drop the rate to 45 MB/s.

A major problem, though: while idle, the drives hover around ~47 degC. With ~1hr of heavy reading, they heat up to ~60 degC (with ambient temps around ~20 degC). The design of this dock blocks _all_ airflow to the bottom end of the drives, leading to severe overheating. This makes BlackX practically useless for duplication of larger drives; they'll overheat/fail long before the duplication has finished. E.g., I managed to copy ~150G of a 500G drive before it hit 60degC and stopped.

Looks like a major design flaw; plan to return it.

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Product Description:
Industry's most trusted hard drive docking station is now twice as convenient. BlacX Duet now offers two slots to turn any Serial ATA hard drives into external USB 2.0 or eSATA storage device in minutes. Moving large chunks of videos, musics or data files between hard drives will now happen in blazing speed (up to 3.0 Gbps for eSATA or 480Mbps for USB 2.0) instead of the slow network cable. The dock supports all 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch SATA hard disk drives up to 2 TB. Installation requires no screws or tools whatsoever. Simply pop your hard drive into the dock, plug it into your computer and you are set! Hot-swap support means you can use multiple hard drives with your computer without having to reboot. The dock also maximizes heat dissipation and exhaust to protect your device from damage and extend its life. Compatibility with both PCs and Macs makes the BlacX Duet adapt to multi platform environments.

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