HDD Stage Rack evolves again: now holds twice the hard drives

Oh, brother -- here we go again. For the third time this year, the iconic HDD Stage Rack has evolved into something bigger, badder and more useful than the last edition. The latest version is dubbed the Double HDD Rack eSATA and USB, which predictably includes twice the slots for storing hard drives. You can shove a 2.5- and 3.5-inch SATA drive in just before enjoying the twin eSATA ports and single USB 2.0 jack, but unfortunately, you'll have to hand over a whopping $107.56 in order to do so.

[Via AkihabaraNews]

[Blaine Oliver @ Jun 6th 2008 11:13AM]

Wheres my ugly stick? This was obviously struck with it...

[bohsocks @ Jun 6th 2008 11:16AM]

Ugly or not... all I care is if it will charge my Norelco shaver....

[happy_penguin @ Jun 6th 2008 11:35AM]

The beauty is in the functionality.

[System48 @ Jun 6th 2008 11:14AM]

What happened to the media card reader?

[Hooterman @ Jun 6th 2008 11:54AM]

That will be on the new version next month.

[spass @ Jun 6th 2008 12:09PM]

Hopefully the next version would support RAID as well...

[Curtis Joslin @ Jun 6th 2008 11:17AM]

Make one of the slots an IDE and put a couple usb ports on the front and i am sold!

[Allan @ Jun 6th 2008 11:50AM]

The pins of an IDE drive might be a little too much of a complication. I can just see too many people forcing the drive in wrong and messing it up.

But that would make one awesome hot-swappable drive stand.

[Dragonpark @ Jun 6th 2008 12:43PM]

Both IDE and SATA drives cost about the same (and the fact that IDE drives are starting to be phased out), so i see no reason to provide support for that. The complications with adding something like that would be a bit of a pain, as well.

[johnzilla @ Jun 6th 2008 2:37PM]

@Dragonpark:

IDE might be phasing out, but I'd bet there are hundreds of thousands of perfectly good 20/40/60/80 GB IDE drives floating around in peoples' closets and desk drawers.

I don't see anything wrong with giving them an easy option to reuse those drives as needed instead of chucking them into a landfill.

[Frankenstein Black @ Jun 8th 2008 2:47AM]

HERE, HERE! I mean HELLO!!!!
There's still an Azz load of IDE drives out there, ya know?

[Magnulus @ Jun 6th 2008 11:19AM]

NOW we're talking! We're getting closer to what I've been wanting for a while now. I'd rather wait for USB 3.0 as long as I can only connect with one at a time, but it's certainly starting to look like a viable solution.

[Xepol @ Jun 6th 2008 11:21AM]

Ya, this isn't horribly over prices, nope not at all.

After all, when you can just buy a cheap external USB drive case and just use the circuit board for a fraction of the price and about the same result... well...

[saintchuck @ Jun 6th 2008 5:08PM]

Until I have to buy a external case for each of the internal drives I have lying around then even at $10-15 each it would exceed this. This is an excellent solution for those that need it.

[Xepol @ Jun 6th 2008 7:57PM]

I have one that I can move from hd to hd - its a board with serial ATA plugs on it that do pretty much the same thing, don't need the rest of the case.

Only takes one.

Or two if you want a p-ata model as well.

[gad get @ Jun 6th 2008 11:29AM]

What a nice toaster!

[Jeremiah Zachary Hoffman @ Jun 6th 2008 12:23PM]

mom, why does my toast taste like PCB?

[MadMike @ Jun 6th 2008 11:32AM]

For $100 that's not bad... Useful....

Get a quick IDE-SATA adapter and you can do older IDE drives also.

[kal326 @ Jun 6th 2008 11:58AM]

Not bad if your a fan of wallet rape. These are about as good of a deal as a Power Mac.

I just pickup a tool-less 2.5" drive cage that supports eSata and you can install the drive in the cage in about 10 seconds. It came with a eSata cable, Sata to eSata backplate, and provides power off a USB connection. In addition the drive can be run entirely USB. The price $14. So I could get a oh 7 of these for the price of one of these over priced pieces of plastic that looks like a HD toaster. A 3.5 cage wouldn't be all that much more, but would require an external power supply or power pass through off an internal molex connector throught the backplate.

[MadMike @ Jun 6th 2008 12:39PM]

Even with that Sarbanes-Oxley bullcrap, I can buy 9 of these without approval.

[io @ Jun 6th 2008 11:35AM]

for $110, i'd hit it

[The Engadgeter @ Jun 6th 2008 11:37AM]

$108 is really really steep for a product like this

Throw in $47 shipping costs and you're officially looking at highway robbery

[Skry @ Jun 6th 2008 11:45AM]

I maintain my position that is a really valuable tool for reviewers of PC hardware, however for the average consumer I can't see it being used much.

[saintchuck @ Jun 6th 2008 5:11PM]

Sticky-tape labeler + This + Bunch of Harddrives = pr0n heaven

[kal326 @ Jun 6th 2008 12:01PM]

@Hooterman
And a few months after that they will come out with a new 3 drive model without a card reader of course. Wow, those are some innovative sob's they got working there.

[kal326 @ Jun 6th 2008 12:10PM]

Completely off topic, but akihabaranews sure does have some annoying pop in ads in the picture gallery. That and they have about 3 times as many pictures as one would really need of the product. Seriously its like a hard cage porn shoot, you get it from 6 different angles with the 3.5 on top and the 2.5 on the bottom. Then switch them around and shoot from six different angles.

[ginnal @ Jun 6th 2008 12:55PM]

Before I wanted one.
Now I need one.

Time to create a business case.

[digitallysick @ Jun 6th 2008 1:19PM]

RAID?? it would be so worth it, if i could do eSata RAID with this

[michas_pi @ Jun 6th 2008 2:21PM]

Where's the FireWire?

[highjumpman @ Jun 6th 2008 3:51PM]

Imagine the size of this thing in a year's time then...

[Nathan Dbb @ Jun 6th 2008 7:32PM]

Get two single drive units for $40.

VANTEC NexStar NST-D100SU Plastic 2.5" or 3.5" USB 2.0 & eSATA Hard Drive Dock

It may not be as cool as two slots in one block, but it is cheaper and flexible.

[James @ Jun 8th 2008 1:44PM]

From an IT perspective, this would be invaluable for deploying machine images en masse without booting the machines to the network and pulling them down that way, or monopolizing an external drive to plug into them. Yes, you can jury-rig a drive carrier to do the same thing, but from an efficiency standpoint, dropping it in and yanking it out just seems a bit more elegant.

[Duane @ Jun 26th 2008 2:07AM]

I'm a little confused by all the RAID talk. RAID is more of a permanent solution for HDD, and this device is aimed at temporary connection of HDDs. Every time you pulled the two RAID drives out, it would break the RAID and it would have to successfully restore the array config from the drives every time you plugged that pair back in - scary! (not to mention the price would be around $1000) If you're trying to use this as a permanent dock or for a RAID array, that is a bad idea as the drives are exposed, unsecured, and not cooled.