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#314350 - 24/09/2008 00:34 External USB SATA drive dock?
petteri
addict

Registered: 02/08/2004
Posts: 434
Loc: Helsinki, Finland
Does anyone have any experiences with this:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/drives/a7ea/

I've got a couple of spare drives around that I could use to make a quick and dirty back up (secondary to the Time Machine hooked up to the home network) of some files. Any long term damage to be concerned about with this type of setup? Wear and tear on the drive pins? I'm guessing heat wouldn't be an issue.

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#314353 - 24/09/2008 01:32 Re: External USB SATA drive dock? [Re: petteri]
Dignan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/03/2000
Posts: 12338
Loc: Sterling, VA
This has been a pretty popular category of product lately, and the description on that ThinkGeek page is pretty much why. Right this moment, I have five spare SATA drives and another five PATA drives sitting around my desk, and another two SATA drives in a dual-enclosure. When I scrape the cash together I'll put four of the SATAs into a Drobo, but I'll still end up replacing them every once and a while. These spare drives are perfect for backups in particular. They're old, but only have to run a fraction of the time of an in-use drive. I always make two backups, so there's virtually no chance of data loss (*knocking on wood*).

All that said, I do not have one of these, but I can't imagine they're much different than your standard USB-to-SATA adapter, except with a better enclosure to keep the drive stable. I use one of those for my backups and haven't had any problems, so I don't see why this would be any different, if not better. I also imagine that these docks would be easier on SATA drive connectors than the pins of a PATA drive.

The first one of these docks I've seen (and also much prettier than the ThinkGeek product - though more expensive) is this one. I've been wanting one of those for a while now. Since then, there's been several of these docks released, the most recent (and craziest) of which is this one that outputs video.
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Matt

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#314354 - 24/09/2008 01:35 Re: External USB SATA drive dock? [Re: petteri]
matthew_k
pooh-bah

Registered: 12/02/2002
Posts: 2298
Loc: Berkeley, California
We've got one at work and it's great when you've got a lot of hard drives coming through. I don't know if it's a great idea to use long term on the same drives over and over again, as it may place stress on the connectors (it doesn't seem to, but it could be happening). I've also heard that sata connectors aren't rated for that many connects/disconnects, but that seems like an unlikely failure mode that I've never heard of actually being a problem in practice.

If you're backing up in a store it and forget it process like picture backups, it's a great convenience. If you're going to cycle through the same three drives, I'd bite the bullet and buy proper enclosures.

Matthew

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#314355 - 24/09/2008 01:56 Re: External USB SATA drive dock? [Re: Dignan]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Originally Posted By: Dignan
and also much prettier than the ThinkGeek product

To each his own, I guess.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of flat grey-brown. Maybe it's auto-body primer.
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Bitt Faulk

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#314359 - 24/09/2008 02:06 Re: External USB SATA drive dock? [Re: wfaulk]
Dignan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/03/2000
Posts: 12338
Loc: Sterling, VA
Originally Posted By: wfaulk
Originally Posted By: Dignan
and also much prettier than the ThinkGeek product

To each his own, I guess.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of flat grey-brown. Maybe it's auto-body primer.

I'm pretty sure that's black. It's just a bad photo. Check out the pictures further down the page. And even if it was brownish, I'd still prefer it to the much larger, glossy-white ThinkGeek product with the horrible DirecTV HR20-esque bright blue ring:

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Matt

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#314360 - 24/09/2008 02:07 Re: External USB SATA drive dock? [Re: Dignan]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31594
Loc: Seattle, WA
Holy crap I want a couple of those! What an awesome idea!
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Tony Fabris

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#314363 - 24/09/2008 02:37 Re: External USB SATA drive dock? [Re: tfabris]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
There are loads of models of these things if you buy from Hong Kong directly. Shipping is cheap.

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#314366 - 24/09/2008 04:39 Re: External USB SATA drive dock? [Re: tman]
Shonky
pooh-bah

Registered: 12/01/2002
Posts: 2009
Loc: Brisbane, Australia
Originally Posted By: tman
There are loads of models of these things if you buy from Hong Kong directly. Shipping is cheap.

Is this the new Dealextreme?
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Christian
#40104192 120Gb (no longer in my E36 M3, won't fit the E46 M3)

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#314373 - 24/09/2008 10:39 Re: External USB SATA drive dock? [Re: Shonky]
LittleBlueThing
addict

Registered: 11/01/2002
Posts: 612
Loc: Reading, UK
Yep I have one.

It works as advertised.

I got it because I have some spare 200, 300, 320 Gb sata disks hanging around and I can zero them off for security, do a quick backup etc etc.

On my system I get about 30Mb/s on a 2.6.18 kernel but only 512k/sec on a 2.6.25 kernel. Not investigated at all yet.

I also haven't got smart to work yet but again, no investigation/effort.

I do notice that the 'eject' causes the drive to move before it spins down. I've had several RMA replacements recently and you have to wait a few seconds before the gyroscopic effect diminishes <eek>

I got mine off ebay smile
(oh, and if I open the cupboard I see it's black)
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LittleBlueThing Running twin 30's

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#314379 - 24/09/2008 11:34 Re: External USB SATA drive dock? [Re: Shonky]
StigOE
addict

Registered: 27/10/2002
Posts: 568
Originally Posted By: Shonky
Originally Posted By: tman
There are loads of models of these things if you buy from Hong Kong directly. Shipping is cheap.

Is this the new Dealextreme?

No, I don't think so.
DealExtreme: free shipping
Brando: $3 for all orders

2-in-1 Laser Point and LED
DealExtreme: $4.78 for a 4-pack
Brando: $6 for 1

Photon LED Lights
DealExtreme: $4.73 for 10
Brando: $5 for 1 (they have more colors, though)

These are (the) only two that I checked. I'll pass, thank you.

Stig

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#315402 - 22/10/2008 10:10 Re: External USB SATA drive dock? [Re: StigOE]
LittleBlueThing
addict

Registered: 11/01/2002
Posts: 612
Loc: Reading, UK
FYI - these things probably won't do SMART.

Not a huge deal - but I wanted to use mine to check the status of various disks that are hanging around and it's a bit of a nuisance that you can't do self-tests and the like.

more details:
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/faq.html#testinghelp
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LittleBlueThing Running twin 30's

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#315416 - 22/10/2008 16:03 Re: External USB SATA drive dock? [Re: LittleBlueThing]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
Originally Posted By: LittleBlueThing
FYI - these things probably won't do SMART


Which things?

I have one of the white NexStar "toaster" docks here, and everything works when using eSATA to talk to it, including SMART.

Not over USB, though. I have yet to find a USB enclosure/adapter that works with smartctl, though many of the newer ones now *do* support SCSI-ATA-Transport Passthrough for hdparm and the like.

Cheers

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