Legit Reviews

Thermaltake BlacX 5G Hard Drive Docking Station Review

Today we are looking at the latest edition the the Thermaltake BlacX series of hard drive docks. This module is equipped with a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface and claims to be the best hard drive docking station yet from Thermaltake. Read on to see if it can reach that goal since it can run both 2.5” & 3.5” SATA I/II/3.0 & Solid-State Drive up to 2 TB.

The Thermaltake BlacX 5G Hard Drive Docking Station is a dream come true for folks that want to set up a rotating drive back up scheme. You could backup to a drive for two weeks and then swap out the drive with a second drive while placing the first drive in a secure place. This would allow you to easily set up a disaster recovery plan for a home server without having to use a cloud based service if you so desired.

Article Title: Thermaltake BlacX 5G Hard Drive Docking Station Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1499/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $48 shipped

I have the USB2 version of this, have use the thing daily for years.

I've got an Vantec one but what bothers me is the heat the HDD's produce whilst in use beats me why you'd want to stick an silicon blanket on it to hold in even more heat

Athlonite wrote:I've got an Vantec one but what bothers me is the heat the HDD's produce whilst in use beats me why you'd want to stick an silicon blanket on it to hold in even more heat

A HDD barely makes any heat. In the average room temp of a house (72*F) you're not going to have any huge heatups from the drive in use.

And HDD's are rated to work (in optimum conditions) between 25*C & 60*C. With low humidity (20% I think?)

Tator Tot wrote:

Athlonite wrote:I've got an Vantec one but what bothers me is the heat the HDD's produce whilst in use beats me why you'd want to stick an silicon blanket on it to hold in even more heat

A HDD barely makes any heat. In the average room temp of a house (72*F) you're not going to have any huge heatups from the drive in use.

And HDD's are rated to work (in optimum conditions) between 25*C & 60*C. With low humidity (20% I think?)

wanna bet about temps it maybe true about slow as mud green HDD's but just try putting in 7k2 HDD's and watch the temps rise when doing alot of copying and most desktop HDD's are rated for 50c over that and the air inside the drive become to thin to hold the r/w heads of the platter safely because the lack of air density at 50c the r/w head arms don't get enough lift just like an airplane wing

Athlonite wrote:wanna bet about temps it maybe true about slow as mud green HDD's but just try putting in 7k2 HDD's and watch the temps rise when doing alot of copying and most desktop HDD's are rated for 50c over that and the air inside the drive become to thin to hold the r/w heads of the platter safely because the lack of air density at 50c the r/w head arms don't get enough lift just like an airplane wing

Most Desktop HDD's are rated at 60*C
Western Digital, Samsung, & Seagate are all showing the same numbers. These are also from the mainstream line; not Enterprise, RAID Class, or other "beefed up" editions.

Operating -0°C to 60° C
Non-operating -40°C to 70° C

I'm currently running a 2TB drive in a external enclosure; it's a 7200 RPM, 4 platter drive. Even copying over a 12GB BluRay movie, it only comes up to 40*C. The enclosure I"m running is just an aluminum housing from Bytec.
This is in a 25*C room.

Any of these open air docking stations do not get the drive that warm. If they did we would have more people complaining about them; as they would have drive failures rather often.