Thermaltake BlacX 5G HDD Docking Station Review

Quick access to a SATA port is not something that something that everyone looks for, but there are a select number of those out there who do – for example people who maintain computer systems and need to remove the hard drive and plug it into another system for quick access. Naturally, opening up a case each time is not exactly the most practical option out there and as we’ve seen recently, there are 5.25″ hot swap drive options out there that covers this base.

There is another side to this situation however, and this comes to SFF systems and laptops, where installing a hot swap bay, lets face it isn’t going to happen. What we need therefore is the ability to have a SATA dock that doesn’t need to be internally mounted into a computer and is easy enough to connect up to the likes of a laptop.

External SATA docks are not a new concept and there have been loads of variations on the market for a few years now, however until only recently the vast majority of these were solely USB2.0 based and with USB3.0 now becoming the standard, why should we have to substitute speed for practicality? This is where the BlacX 5G comes in.

Built solely out of plastic, the BlacX 5G supports both 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives with a transfer rate of upto 5Gbps. The unit is fully backwards compatible with USB2.0 and 1.1 and works with both Windows and Mac OSX. On paper this dock has got a lot going for it, but the best way to find out is to get tucked in by having a closer look followed by those all important benchmark results.