Hot-swap SATA to USB 3.0 dock from ThermalTake

I’ve seen a couple of UB 3.0 drive docks announced over the last couple of months, but this new model from ThermalTake stood out in my mailbox. The BlacX 5G supports both 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch SATA drives; instead of traditional external drive enclosures where you have to open a case to insert the disk, this unit allows you to insert a drive without any other steps.

The dock supports both USB 2.0 and 3.0 connections to a PC or Mac, offering a 5 Gbps connection when using the latter. As for drives, all recent SATA drives should be supported; the specs mention SATA 3.0, which supports 6 Gbps transfers. Drives can be hot-swapped. The retail package contains a power adapter and USB 3.0 cable; MSRP is $49,95. The specs do not mention whether a 2.5 inch drives could be used without the power adapter; but since this dock will probably be sitting on your desk for most of its life that won’t be a big issue for most users.