Thermaltake BlacX STAT USB HDD Dock (From news forum)
 

Thermaltake has just come up with the ultimate enthusiast accessory; at least that is what went through my head when I first saw the press release of the new BlacX and BlacX SE. As I read the release my mind started to drift away, thinking about the two foot tall stack of SATA drives sitting in my closet and how useful it would be to just grab a drive and start transferring data to it within seconds.

Forget about the need to take off the side panel, get on the floor, find a flash light and locate one of two hundred SATA cables that are in the room (that you can never find when you need one). Just grab a drive and plug it in. If this scenario sounds familiar, than you are definitely a PC enthusiast and will want to read on to have a look at the new Thermaltake BlacX.

That scenario is painfully familiar!

I was talking to my buddy the other day about how cool this thing was and he disagreed. He said how often would you really use it and it would leave the drive out in the open in "danger." I guess if you aren't a tech or don't do much with computers then you would never really use it for what it's meant to be. Personally I think I would use it a lot... now if they had an IDE version that I could just plug an IDE hard drive in then start the computer up since it isn't hot-swappable. It would look a whole lot better than a plain old IDE computer sticking out of the case... lol.

I'm going to copy this thread over to the hardware board so the discussion can continue once it's been pushed off the frontpage.

Personally, i dont see much of a difference between this and just a regular external HD.

It does look sexy though, i could picture one on my desk

When I first saw this I was excited, but the lack of eSATA kept me from getting it. Vantec just released one that looks a little better, has USB 2.0 and eSATA. It just doesnt come in black yet.

eSATA would be fantastic. As it is this is an excellent SATA solution, but to be able to drop in a drive to read/write/backup like a NES cartridge, and do it over eSATA would be hawt.

They have to work a little at the design here.I also do not like the drive left out in the open

the point is being able to quickly swap drives and get data, they aren't meant for long term use ;)

Kingwin has a version of this that is eSATA. I swap externals all the time and got one of these, and personally i think its awesome.

http://kingwin.com/product_pages/ez_dock.asp