BlacX USB 2.0

[MilesAhead]

I got the BlacX USB 2.0 dock today. Works as expected on W7 7077. Only impression so far is make sure you have your own USB 2.0 printer type cable cuz the one that comes in the box is only 2' long by the look of it!!

I have an old 200 GB Sata II drive in it for now. One thing I notice is W7 won't let me set it to optimized disk write caching in Device Manager, but it seems to cache writes anyway. A 350 MB file written from the HD onto it just jumped on there, while read was @25 MB/sec. Comparable with my Seagate external.

I'm waiting for 750 GB WD Caviar Black to try that out.

The only thing I did notice was a bit of vibration on the table but I moved it back a foot or so away from the mouse and it seems ok. No pad underneath at this point. One other minor quibble is it seems the fad these days to combine the power LED with the disk access LED. So when you look over to check the disk access, you are staring at the stupid power LED which seems to insist on being bright purple. Wonder how long it will take for customer feedback to get rid of this? If they save money by combining the lights at least use subdued colors that don't provoke eye strain. On my HP quad core I had to put a piece of black cardboard over the power LED to see the disk access LED. Hope this trend goes away soon.

Other than that the unit seems quiet and does what it does.

[doctorhardware]

That way they can save a few pennies and charge a few dollars more for the product, The bi-color LED's seem to be the rad now a days. For me I would rather have separate LED's for the power and the hard drive.

[MilesAhead]

I don't mind the little oval bicolor thing if they would get rid of the purple. I have a feeling there's some UV to that light. It's just annoying. Of course separate LEDs with softer colors would be even better.

So far I like it though. No need to read the manual.

[doctorhardware]

I just ordered one from Thermaltake's web site. It was refurbished and it was $24.99 with free shipping. I got the one that has the Esata interface.

[MilesAhead]

Let me know how you make out. I just got my ack from SuperMediaStore. My drive did get shipped via FedEx so I'm hoping that will avoid the DOA syndrome. The drives cost more than Egg but at the moment they seem to be shipping using FedEx(I was getting my blank media "free shpping" via FedEx so I took a shot.) The differential seems to be @$12. A bit cheaper than paying for the FedEx shipping at Egg with the same drive all things considered.

[doctorhardware]

I just got my HP laptop on Monday, which was also UPS, and had no problems. Also had a LCD monitor shipped by UPS also had no problems. So I guess I am lucky or I do not know why I have no problems with UPS. Only once I received damage goods which was over 8 years ago since then nothing. One thing is I do for the most part I get hard drives locally. I have a Tiger Direct and a Micro Center that I can choose from. I look at how much the shipping cost verses the sales tax is. If one is cheaper then the other I either buy it on line or buy at the brick and mortar store. The tiger store is by my pain mananement doctor, so I leave early and go to the tiger store. For micro store I hit that place on the weekend due to less traffic to deal with.

[MilesAhead]

I got paranoid because a lot of the reviews I read on Egg's own site complained about DOA drives. One guy went into a big tutorial about UPS having 6' drops in their package handling. If it's true I don't know. But this person claimed he never got a bad drive from Egg via FedEx cheapest shipping. I hate having to ship stuff back. When I buy a PC I like to go to a brick & mortar store. By the time I've made up my mind what I want to get, then I want to plug it in and go. If I get a bad machine I want to be able to throw it in the car and take it back the same day.

Stuff like blank media is just too good a deal online to buy any other way. I might have taken a chance but when you see reviews on the retailer's own site, and lots of 'em, talking about DOA drives, it just seems like tempting fate.

[MilesAhead]

Got my 750 GB WD today. Using it now with the dock. So far so good. It came packed in thick foam with a rectangular cut-out. Of course as soon as I got shipping confirmation Egg had a special for 1 TB drive shipped for the same money.

Guess as soon as you buy something v. 2.0 comes out 1.5 times as big!!

[doctorhardware]

That is the way it always happens. My docking station delivery date was changed to Thursday, from today. So it will be here tomorrow.

[MilesAhead]

At least I had a $5 coupon for Egg. The dock ran me $31 and change. I just did a backup. The compressed backup is about 21 GB and it took around 19 or 20 minutes(according to Paragon "elapsed time" anyway) to write it. Not too bad. Now I can keep more backups of each system with a few duplicates for safety.

[doctorhardware]

The one that I got was direct from thermaltake with free shipping, was $24.99 it is a refurbished unit.

[MilesAhead]

Looks like I bought my drive just in time. SuperMediaStore just raised the price by $7.

http://www.supermediastore.com/western-digital-wd-750gb-wd7501aals-sata-300-7200rpm-caviar-black-hard-drive-hd.html

[dr_ml422]

Miles you will love the docking station and the transfer rates are unbelievable. I did a full erase of my 1TB WD Caviar Green. The Deleted files that is w/Revo Uninstaller and it breezed right through it. Quicker than my 80gb os WD. Then again you have to count the bottle necking from w/in the same drive.

@doc let us know how that e-sata turns out and if you really see a considerable difference in speed.

[MilesAhead]

Now is a good time to watch prices. They are oscillating wildly!! The Best Buy price was up around $50 a short time ago. Now I see it at Best Buy online for $31 and change.

edit: check that.. I guess it's NewEgg now has the ESata model for $32

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=blacx&x=0&y=0

[doctorhardware]

Well on wednesday I have more lower back injections. So I will be heading to CompUsa(Tiger Direct) and pick up 2 500 gig hard drives for the laptop. Then I will run true image and see how it runs and then do some file back ups and look at the speed with esata and then with usb. It is nice that the docking station came with both cables.