Hot-swap drive enclosures can add a certain level of urgency and sophistication to almost any system. The ability to whip a drive out of the system and toss in a new one at a moments notice satisfies a certain, primal urge most users have from time to time (particularly while troubleshooting). Whether it is intended to impress others, make you the hero of the day, simplify your life, or something else, few can argue with a drive bay that lets you remove a drive with ease whether the system is running or turned off. Continue reading

Toshiba has been producing 2.5” external hard drives for some time now, but until recently never ventured into the world of higher capacity 3.5” external hard drives. Today we will be taking a look at Toshiba’s first attempt at a 3.5” external hard drive. Continue reading

Verbatim computer peripherals are well known, and I have used their computer mice and recordable disks for years. This will be the first hard drive from Verbatim that I have ever used, and it offers a new feature: an always-on “cholesteric” display. It’s a very small 2.5” hard drive that is USB powered and operated in a sleek package. This is nothing new, but the drive also includes a microchip that reads the partition information of the drive and displays the partition name and available space on a display. Continue reading

I have been familiar with ThermalTake products for years, having built my first custom computer using one of their Xaser-II cases. I’m also familiar with their typical over-engineering. In the case of the Xaser-II, the front door was made of ¼-inch cold-rolled steel, and weighed close to five pounds. Throughout the years, that case has served many purposes and held together perfectly due to its stellar build quality. Up now is the BlacX Duet, an external hard drive dock for internal SATA hard drives. The “Duet” is for two drives being simultaneously accessible by eSATA and USB with this product. Continue reading

Once, accessing data off of spare hard drives took more effort than it was worth. The introduction of inexpensive external enclosures made swapping hard drives much easier than opening up the computer was, but enclosures can still be a hassle for those hard drives you only need quick access to files. Like recovering files when Windows won’t boot, or grabbing a single document or picture off of an old hard drive. Enter: the hard drive dock. Hard drive docks allow hard drives to be swapped quickly and easily, without screws or tools, making them ideal for those brief times you need to use an internal drive externally. Today we will be looking at Thermaltake’s BlacX SATA hard drive dock. Continue reading

When Other World Computing sent me the Voyager Q Hard Drive Dock, I had (and still do) some reservations about the safety of a having an internal hard drive running in such an open environment. The dock poses as a desktop solution to hot-pluggable, external storage at internal storage prices. We’ll be looking at its performance across the wide array of interfaces it offers, and its functionality as a whole. Continue reading

Lately, external hard drive docks have become a popular accessory, specifically the open form factor ones that allow quick swapping of the media in the dock. The Kingwin EZ-Dock is a medium to low cost option with all of the features of the more expensive models. Continue reading

SATA docks are everywhere. Every company has their own version of essentially the same thing. But today we have something a little different, the Dual Hdd Dock from Cavalry. This drive can accommodate not only one, but two SATA drives at once, and connects them to your computer with the ubiquitous USB 2.0 interface. Continue reading