Docking station for drives

[coffee]

Hello.

Hey, Just want to ask a recomendation for a good docking station for hard drives. Prefer eSATA port to connect to winbox.

I did buy a Bytecc T-101bk and I do believe its DOA.

I setup a win7 box and want to use the docking station to scan customers drives for viruses and malware. Figure it would free up my time a bit to work on more equipment.

I run a totally linux shop but needed something to scan for viruses. I did try avast for linux but didnt like it because its missing some options that the win version has.

Thanx,

 

[OldSchoolPC]

This may seem a little pricy, but it's worth it:


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817821011

The hard drive duplication feature alone makes it worth it's weight in gold.

 

[coffee]

Probably wasnt that clear....

Want a sata connection to the computer. Looks good though. Yep., Its pricey. For the price I would have thought it came with eSATA.?

thanks

 

[OldSchoolPC]

Probably wasnt that clear....

Want a sata connection to the computer. Looks good though. Yep., Its pricey. For the price I would have thought it came with eSATA.?

thanks

Sorry, I must not have read that eSata part. If you have a USB 3.0 port (probably do) you should still get this. Any reason why you want eSata in particular?

 

[DSep]

I recommend the thermaltake ones.
Dual
Single

 

[Lersar]

+1 for the Thermaltake. I have one at home as well as the office. Has both USB 2.0 and eSATA.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

I have this one and have had no issues with it. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112

 

[mraikes]

This may seem a little pricy, but it's worth it:


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817821011

The hard drive duplication feature alone makes it worth it's weight in gold.

Very nice.

I already have (and like) a Thermaltake dual drive unit, but I've just ordered one of those Calvary devices for the stand alone duplication you mentioned. That's going to come in handy.

By the way, it's a little cheaper plus free shipping (with Prime) on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Cavalry-Retri...andalone-Duplicator/dp/B003ZDLATE/ref=lh_ni_t

 

[MobileTechie]

I seem to remember reading Scott Mueller saying that the speed increase of e-sata was theoretical and in practice no better than USB?

 

[dbdawn]

I have one of the single bay Thermaltake drive dock units for about 6-8 years now. It is only USB 2.0, but that has never been a limitation for me. Overall a very good unit.

 

[Larry Sabo]

I recommend the thermaltake ones.
Dual
Single

I have both of these and they are very good. However, the dual unit only does dual if the motherboard incorporates an eSATA port multiplier, where the the single eSata cable can allow communication with either drive in an interleaved manner. My old Dell E520 doesn't. The USB connection handles both drives at once but is slower than eSATA. Since I have the two docks and two controllers, I use one dock each if I need dual access.

 

[DSep]

I seem to remember reading Scott Mueller saying that the speed increase of e-sata was theoretical and in practice no better than USB?

Interesting. I've never heard of such a thing, nor arrived at that conclusion from using an e-sata dock. Now I'm thinking I should do an experiment.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Thie following is the concluding reply to a thread on this in tomshardware.com :

pbear573 01-25-2012 at 09:52:51 AM

p1n3apqlexpr3ss wrote :

Its a bit weird actually
SATA - 1.5Gb
SATA 2 - 3Gb
SATA 3 - 6Gb
USB 2 - 480Mb
USB 3 - 5Gb

Hard to say right now what most companies will use in future, my guess would be USB3.0 however

Theoretically, a SATA connection of equal bandwidth of that of a USB, would still outperform the USB drive.... The reason is simple...

eSATA and SATA (take v3.0/6GBPs in this example vs. USB3.0@5GBPs) drives do not need to do extra conversion sets when reading/writing xferring data. For this reason, eSATA will outperform USB because it does not need to convert data/instruction sets. An external HDD on an eSATA connection xfers the data straight, practically like it was an internal HDD, to the controller chip. A USB external HDD must translate from SATA (the actual HDD itself), into USB coding, which is then read by the USB controller. A USB drive has an extra 'stop' if you will, while an eSATA pipes straight into the system as if it was no different (for practical purposes) than a internal.

The one BIG advantage USB has over eSATA, is that USB generally will not require an external power supply when using a portable external HDD (based on 2.5" drives for example).

So if you are focused straight on performance, eSATA is the way to go IF you can accommodate it. eSATA eHDDs can also be had in general, for less than a USB 3.0 one.

 

[MobileTechie]

I could have misremembered it but I seem to remember that the thinking was that these docks have an interface that does some conversion whether you use esata or USB and that interface is the limiting factor, not the cable speed. But it was a while ago so might be wrong.

 

[OldSchoolPC]

I could have misremembered it but I seem to remember that the thinking was that these docks have an interface that does some conversion whether you use esata or USB and that interface is the limiting factor, not the cable speed. But it was a while ago so might be wrong.

I think you are right. This is one of those cases where it really makes no difference as far as how much throughput you actually get, between USB 3.0 and eSata. An internal hard drive will be faster, but that's not what's in question. We all are well aware, that a computer is only as fast as it's slowest component. I doubt even a fully defragmented hard drive would max out the theoretical throughput. Correct me on that last point if I am wrong.

 

[dgast]

KingWin EZ-Dock

Coffee,

I have 2 of these on an eSata card and they work great.

http://www.google.com/products/cata...=X&ei=4QwjT5uMEou-gAfjx8mcBQ&ved=0CH4Q8gIwAw#

 

[coffee]

Hi,

Thanks for all the replies!

dgast: I think I might invest in 2 of those for that price!!

thanks!

BTW --- If you havent already, Install the firefox add on called "Invisible hand". What this does is when you are checking out an item on the web it will search places for the best price! I use it all the time and its kinda automatic. Saves alot of money!