SATA HDD dock becomes mutant card reader, scares pets

We're big fans of SATA HDD docks that let you quickly access whole drives like noisy, overgrown memory sticks. An earlier unit offered just USB connectivity to your Mac or PC, later adding eSATA before rounding out its options with FireWire. Now we have a new model that still accepts bare 2.5- and 3.5-inch disks on top, but ditches the FireWire connectivity on the back in exchange for a card reader and two-port USB hub on the front -- perfect for plugging in storage of the smaller and quieter variety.

[FrankTheCrank @ May 27th 2008 12:50PM]

This thing is awesome...but man, the price.

For $79 bucks I can get two separate devices that do the same thing including the shipping...and then with the money that is left over I can get a massage from the hot Chinese girl at the mall.

[Mr.Tech @ May 27th 2008 1:07PM]

One of the smartest thing I have seen so far. Now they only have to add another sata dock so you can use 2 sata in one. Also add a dust cover trap so dust won't go in unless it's time for you to sock in those sata drives.

[James Cameron @ May 27th 2008 1:59PM]

@FrankTheCrank

Man you are such an idiot. You complain about the price but aren't you going to end up spending the same amount getting separate devices?

And the Chinese girl say " Me no love you long time". You cheap bastard.

[Eric M. @ May 27th 2008 2:13PM]

@James Cameron

Clearly you're the idiot. He was just arguing that the price is so high that he COULD get separate devices that would do the same thing AND still have money left over.

So basically he's just saying that instead of paying the higher price he could just buy two devices and have money left over to spend else where (in this case a Chinese massage).

[Lars @ May 27th 2008 4:07PM]

That thing is pretty nice. Maybe a bit pricey for my personal budget, but great for work. I love how you can just jam the HDD straight down into it. For IT use, it's brilliant.

[rayw @ May 27th 2008 10:30PM]

@thegreatdestroyer

How? Is yours connected to your mobile phone? I don't think that's what the vibrate function was originally intended for.

[Russell de Pina @ May 28th 2008 2:02AM]

Does that include a happy ending?

[thegreatdestroyer @ May 28th 2008 1:17AM]

@rayw

I was talking about the massage girl, sorry i dont know how to spell.
I meant to say is "I hear the massage your cock for money.". I'm an idiot and i apologize.

[Interpol @ May 27th 2008 12:53PM]

An added benefit is that you can drop a 10,000RPM WD Raptor drive in the slot and use it as a space heater.

[Nihility @ May 27th 2008 12:58PM]

Not the new one, it doesn't have the ports aligned properly on the back because of the gigantic (badly designed) heatsink and taking it off ruins the warranty :(

[FrankTheCrank @ May 27th 2008 1:00PM]

Seriously, I disabled my case fans this weekend to see if it would cut back on the noise in my gaming rig....well, it didn't. Damn graphics card and northbridge fan making all kinds of noise. I hate small fast fans.

Anyways...I had my feet resting, no shoes, just socks...on top of my system, well, in the top bay I have a removable 5.25" hard drive enclosure. My Raptor sits in that enclosure. I sensed some heat on my feet. Wow. That drive got super hot.

Suffice to say, I enabled my two, intake and exhaust, 120mm fans and everything was better. Temperatures in the case were much better after that.

[Alexander @ May 27th 2008 1:16PM]

You all need to drop the whining and go Watercooling.

CPU, chipset, HD, Graphics, and powersupply are all watercooled.

2x 120mm Fans keep it all at 10 degrees above room temperature at max system load. All for just 20db of noise.

Compared with the 45db that I had before, it's whisper quiet. The hard drives themselves (clicking away) are louder than the fans until I start playing games.

[Interpol @ May 27th 2008 1:19PM]

I watercooled someone's computer once by peeing on it. After it shorted out the computer was nice and cool.

[phanbouy @ May 27th 2008 2:01PM]

hey Alex,

the only one whining here is you i'm afraid.

by the way, it's water cooled. sorry, not allowing you to make a new word, we got 1.5 million of em in this language already.

[Shinigami @ May 27th 2008 2:43PM]

First. For HDDs use Scythe Quiet Drive. Its a life saver when it comes to cutting noise. I've been using it for a while now and my drives worked nicely making me forget how they sound.
Second. Water cooling is GREAT for videocards with annoying fans, good for CPU (there are cheap air coolers that can do the job with little noise), and not good for motherboard cooling, unless your mobo runs super-hot and requires additional cooling. Mine doesn't. I have passive cooling for the motherboard and its sufficient.
Third. If you can find a good PSU (power supply unit) for a small price which can be water-cooled, I'm happy for you. The ones that I found were extremely powerful (excessively extremely powerful, 1300W while my two 8800GTX and q6700 CPU being OCed ate less than 500W at all times, my PSU is 770W) and extremely pricey ($400, while nice 770W psu costs $150). PSU doesn't need to be water-cooled. It needs 2 things to be cold and quiet:
1 - 120-140mm fan for air intake
2 - 80mm fan for throwing that hot air out of the PSU case.
Neither will do separately, but combined they work great. If your fans are noisy, you can always replace them with Noctua fans, but you might void warranty so be careful.
You don't need to water-cool your HDDs. Putting a fan in front of them to cool them a bit might be a good idea but make sure you don't pull the hot air inside your chassis.
Also, you need a nice chassis. Lian-Li will do for most, same as Cooler Master, Thermaltake and some other brands. $200-300 is a normal price for a good chassis where you will put some expensive (and hot) parts.

As for card-HDD reader, I agree, its price is a bit too high to be of any use.

[Not a band geek @ Jul 7th 2008 10:37PM]

No need for this fancy, expensive stuff for quiet and cool components. Just get an Antec P18X for a little more than 100 bucks.

[Macha88 @ May 27th 2008 11:34PM]

@Alexander: Last time i tried putting ice cubes on my video card, my computer went up in smoke. isnt smoke mean fire, fire is hot right? water cool is actually water heat. thats why heating home with computers is hw i live

man
i suck at comments
fuck sarcasm.

[Nihility @ May 27th 2008 1:01PM]

Misleading picture: The reader also requires a power cord (3.5" drives have a hard time running on USB power).

[Shadowise @ May 27th 2008 1:04PM]

I dont think you can run them via USB at all. 3.5" drives require a 12V supply, which is commonly supplied with most/all hard disk caddies.

[Daza @ May 28th 2008 3:15AM]

You can use USB for the data-transfer and the wall-adapter to power it (which seems like what's going on here). Would be cool if you could run it into 3 USB ports and have power it, though.

[whoster69 @ May 27th 2008 1:02PM]

It looks like you can just slide your 3.5" HDD in and out making this thing like a super floppy drive!

That would be really cool if you have a bunch of old 3.5 HDD laying around.

[Interpol @ May 27th 2008 1:06PM]

Ummmm....that's the POINT of a device like this. It's nothing especially groundbreaking.

[IT-Accountant @ May 27th 2008 1:09PM]

That doesn't mean it's not cool!

I could see this being used for backup purposes. HDD dies? Shazam, backup drive in the "drive reader," and off you go!

[Interpol @ May 27th 2008 1:13PM]

Like I said...nothing especially groundbreaking. These things have been around for a while already. The only thing this one has over the others is slots to read memory cards.

[Jake @ May 27th 2008 1:23PM]

slide your 3.5 inches in and out somewhere else, would you?

-jp

[phanbouy @ May 27th 2008 2:40PM]

yeah... you should go easier on the artificial tanning bronzer

[TheCow5 @ May 27th 2008 1:08PM]

newegg.com has this without the USB port and card reader for 40$

[Mike @ May 27th 2008 2:10PM]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812264002

15$ mail in rebate too so now it's only 25$ :)

seriously, for a USB hot swappable setup that doesn't require you to mess with the inside of the computer its actually not too bad.

[CyberKender @ May 27th 2008 8:01PM]

Ah, but you miss the big difference: The one at Newegg is a USB device. This on connects to your PC by eSATA. Much, much faster data transfer.

[StealthMonkey @ May 27th 2008 1:21PM]

For some reason I absolutely love this thing. It looks so kick ass.

[EMaster @ May 27th 2008 1:27PM]

I know this thing is as ugly as Sin but it can also be VERY helpful. There has been any times I have had to install a HD into a dummy PC just so that I can format the goddamn drive (without using a magnet lol). I am so getting this thing!

[Interpol @ May 27th 2008 1:45PM]

Feh, just buy one of these things:

http://www.satagear.com/SCPBA_SATA_Adapter.html

Not that hard to find. Fry's has tons of these things, all different models and shapes, for less than $20.

[Richard Lai @ May 27th 2008 1:31PM]

That "SATA" lit label is lame.

[Cagrino @ May 27th 2008 1:43PM]

Black electrical tape. Problem solved.

[Starnerf @ May 27th 2008 1:32PM]

It looks like it's shredding the drive into convenient card-sized strips.

[htd @ May 27th 2008 1:32PM]

I dont think eSATA stuff is that cheap, so $79 isnt too bad

[Boarderwoot @ May 27th 2008 1:51PM]

Will blowing on the cartridge first ensure I don't get the constant reset and the Blue Screen o' Death?

[TavisJohn @ May 27th 2008 2:06PM]

I sense that someone still remembers the NES. lol

[michas_pi @ May 27th 2008 2:51PM]

I _just_ realized it looks like a top-loader.

+1, good sir.

[conor @ May 27th 2008 1:57PM]

with my ssd this is like gigantic memory card!

[Shinigami @ May 27th 2008 2:50PM]

A pity it doesn't fit in a digital camera xD

[CtK @ May 27th 2008 1:58PM]

Do they make this for IDE HD??
I have a whole bunch of small IDE HD sitting around, would be nice to use them as backup for some pics/vids.

thanks

[Jooseppi @ May 27th 2008 3:02PM]

Exactly! Please if anyone knows where you can buy a similar desktop slot-in dock for PATA drives, I would appreciate the info immensely! I have been searching for one a lot. I've found some models, but not one with the similar desktop dock kind of design.

Since it would house PATA, the interface would have to be USB2, since PATA can't be hotswapped.

[Nacho PATA @ Jul 29th 2008 1:37PM]

Since there is not a standard port location specification for parallel IDE, I doubt you will ever find a PATA version of this.

The only way would be to have a floating 50-pin connector, and maybe a floating 4-pin Molex.

[James G @ May 27th 2008 2:06PM]

I really want this based on the fact is has firewire 800 support. Does anyone know if this is available yet? I want to use this for backups and extra storage with my macbook pro.

[James G @ May 27th 2008 3:08PM]

Yeah i can't read either i thought this one had firewire support. That sucks!

[Qugeist @ May 27th 2008 2:12PM]

looks cool, a giant "flash disk". But the price is out of my range. I guess if demand is high there would be generics popping up quite quickly. These things aren't that difficult to manufacture, especially there's already card readers and HD external casings at cheap prices, now someone just needs to put them together.

[Interpol @ May 27th 2008 2:22PM]

Do people simply not read the previous comments before making redundant/idiotic ones of their own?

http://www.satagear.com/SCPBA_SATA_Adapter.html

[Shinigami @ May 27th 2008 2:49PM]

Okay, how about this? You just buy an external 2,5 or 1,8 inch HDD in a nice-looking case for some $200 (yeah, its more expensive) and have 250gb from mini-usb! No power cords, no card readers, and the device itself looks great (and fits in a pocket)! Besides, $80 is only for the reader, you'll need to pay extra $ for the HDD itself ;)

[ReggieXuk @ May 27th 2008 3:18PM]

guy 1: This is my scary HD dock, it has a Terabyte.

guy 2: Is it infectious?

guy 1: No its not, OF COURSE IT IS! All that space... you'll spend all your time trying to fill it!

thats all i come to do online, test material and waste time.