Topic: BlacX Docking Station for Hard Drive Swapping

[MysterD]

My hard drive is getting full -- and I got no room inside my PC for another internal HD.

Saw the BlacX Docking Station at Best Buy, which is USB 2.0 based. Basically, you can hot-swap HD's in and out. There's even one BlacX Docking Station that has 4 extra USB hubs I've seen online, too.

Anybody here use a BlacX Docking Station for HD's? How do you like it?

[Cobra951]

What's wrong with getting a simple USB external drive?  If your I/O is going to be USB 2.0 anyway, why is this docking thing any better?

Something else you might consider is getting a much-larger internal SATA drive, then ghosting one of your current drives to it, and swapping it in for the ghosted drive.  If done correctly, the result will be the same system you already have plus a ton more room on one of the drives.  Then you can drop the swapped-out drive into an external enclosure, or put it in a drawer as a backup.

[Quemaqua]

Or you could just uninstall the 40 billion games you have on your drives that you'll never play.

[Xessive]

Or you could just uninstall the 40 billion games you have on your drives that you'll never play.

Ha seriously D, how many do you have currently installed?

If you go for external USB (or 1394 Firewire) I recommend the new WD My Book series. They're sleek, they stack up next to (or on top of) each other and they're quite reliable. I believe WD's got some special offers now too.

[Cobra951]

I have 2 320-GB WD MyBook's, one connected through IEEE 1394 and the other USB 2.0.  They work well.  Their downside is that they will stop spinning after 10 minutes of inactivity, and this is non-defeatable.  I use them for data, not programs.  You can also get them with the fairly new eSATA I/O (3 Gbps) if your motherboard supports it.

[Xessive]

I have 2 320-GB WD MyBook's, one connected through IEEE 1394 and the other USB 2.0.  They work well.  Their downside is that they will stop spinning after 10 minutes of inactivity, and this is non-defeatable.  I use them for data, not programs.  You can also get them with the fairly new eSATA I/O (3 Gbps) if your motherboard supports it.

That's the case with my older MyBook Essential Edition as well as my current 500GB MyBook Essential Edition 2.0.

My latest addition, a 1TB MyBook Home Edition (newer design too), has Firewire, eSATA, and USB 2.0. It's hooked through the Firewire, it is fast, and it seems to only stop spinning when the PC is in sleep mode. It only cost me about $250 USD.