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Thermaltake BlacX Duet Docking Station

Specifications:

Enclosure Interface eSATA
USB 2.0
Transfer Rate eSATA: up to 3Gbps
USB 2.0: up to 480Mbps
HDD Compatible SATA I
SATA II
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
Material ABS Plastic
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
Fan N/A
Weight 3 lbs
Special Features
  • 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 3Gbps

A Closer Look:

The front of box has a nice mock up of the docking station in action while the back lists the features and specifications.

thumbs box front Thermaltake BlacX Duet Docking Station thumbs box back Thermaltake BlacX Duet Docking Station

The BlacX Duet comes with everything you need to start hooking up drives. The eSATA cable that’s included is a rather heavy gauge cable. I was impressed by this. It means they’re not cheaping out on their cables. The two LED’s on the power button double as a power light and activity lights.

thumbs contents Thermaltake BlacX Duet Docking Station thumbs in action Thermaltake BlacX Duet Docking Station

While many new enclosures feature both eSATA and USB, not many feature two hard drive slots. The BlacX Duet has all of this and one caveat for using two drives with eSATA. The caveat is that in order to be able to use two drives at the same time over eSATA, your controller card needs to be able to support the port multiplier function. This isn’t a problem with USB as it just natively supports it. One thing we noticed in our testing is that in regards to communication between the two drives, they have to have all data routed through the computer. Basically it means that the drives are limited in speed by whatever connection they have whenever they communicate amongst themselves. When using the eSATA connection it shouldn’t have any significant impact for most drives, however the USB interface will limit the drives to a total of 480 Mbps communication amongst themselves, which can get saturated pretty easily.

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  8. [...] Click the icon, or enter email address to receive reviews via email! We will not share your info! IT staff and computer repair shop technicians are always having to perform recovery tasks on their…Read more… [...]

  9. [...] Read & Write 2 Hard Drives simultaneously; Supports All 2.5” & 3.5” SATA Hard Drives up to 2TB (per slot); Hot-Swap Capability for Rapid Multi HDDs Access & Exchange* When utilizing eSATA interface, Port Multiplier feature is required on the host system’s eSATA … Thermaltake Muse eSATA 3.5? Aluminum Hard Drive Enclosure @ Bona Fide Reviews Thermaltake BlacX Duet Hard Drive Docking Station Review @ TechwareLabs G.Skill Falcon II 128GB SSD Review @ [...] …Read more… [...]

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