Reviewed by Barry Little - May 8, 2008

Manufacturer: Thermaltake

Model: N0029USU

Available at: Directron.com and Shopping.com

For hard-core enthusiasts and hardware reviewers, working with and shuffling around hard drives outside the case for system imaging, upgrading and testing can often be a real workspace-cluttering chore with the ever-looming possibility of damaging a hard drive. Fortunately, Thermaltake—a leader in hi-performance PC peripherals, has solved that problem with their latest accessory—the Thermaltake BlacX SE HDD Docking Station.

From their line of award-winning tower cases, CPU coolers and their impressive array of liquid cooling systems, to a wide range of power supplies for almost every computer application, Thermaltake is a brand name that is well known among the PC enthusiast community. A brand name associated with maximum performance, quality and innovation.

About Thermaltake

Founded in 1999, Thermaltake Technology is the world leader in the supply of thermal management cooling solutions, high-end power supply and chassis for desktop PC and industrial application systems. Building on the strength of its people, products and extensive expertise in thermal management, Thermaltake raised the level of excellence on its award winning PurePower branded power supply as well as Xaser line of chassis.

While mission-critical applications for enterprises and ultimate video gaming experiences available for gaming enthusiast all rely on today’s cutting-edge PCs to deliver, high-end PC makers rely on Thermaltake to provide the most reliable power supply, the most thermally efficient chassis and cooling solutions.

As a leader in thermal management, Thermaltake is the trusted supplier to many computer manufacturers providing Intel Validated and AMD Approved CPU coolers for today’s high frequency and mainstream CPUs.

At the pace of current technological advancement in multimedia applications and multi-core processors, thermal management will become an ever more challenging task requiring innovative product design and reliable manufacturing process; a task that has made what Thermaltake it is now, and in the future.

Serious PC enthusiasts, technicians, and hardware review sites often find it necessary to operate a hard drive outside the protection of a case for any number of reasons. Sometimes multiple hard drives are involved. Under these circumstances, it’s usually impractical and time consuming to swap drives in and out of cases. A number of inexpensive adaptors and cables are available on the market, which allows connecting a hard drive to a USB port, making the hard drive an invaluable fast and easy tool for backups, imaging an existing drive to a newer, larger drive, or re-imaging a drive with a corrupted operating system. With the proper motherboard BIOS support, a bootable clone of a hard drive can be created and pressed into service in an emergency, to extract data from or repair the original drive using the appropriate utilities, which has been rendered unbootable by a virus, a bad driver or software install that hosed Windows, or corruption caused by an overclocking session gone too far.

While operating a hard drive outside the protection of an enclosure isn’t recommended, it can be done safely provided certain precautions are observed in a clean, well-organized work area. Still, to err is human, and often times work areas are anything but clean or well organized. Throw in more drives, adaptor cables, and power cords. A laptop or two and one cup or can too many of your favorite hot or cold caffeinated beverage. And the fact that it’s now 4 AM in the morning, and you’ve been going full-throttle for the last twelve hours to meet several deadlines. One wrong move or bump could send some of those hard drives perched on a stack of motherboard boxes crashing to the floor, or getting an unwanted bath from your tenth cup of lukewarm coffee.

What about conventional external hard drive enclosures? Well, they’d certainly protect the drive from the scenario just mentioned. But again, if you’re frequently shuffling around hard drives, using an external drive enclosure is no more practical or less time consuming than swapping drives in and out of a PC case—it’s just smaller. While most external drive enclosures aren’t expensive, purchasing one for every drive in your inventory isn’t cheap, either. With an ever-present finger on the pulse of the enthusiast community, Thermaltake knew there had to be a more economical and better way to deal with the problem.

That’s when Thermaltake’s BlacX HDD Docking Station was born.

Inspired by Western Digital’s famous Raptor X 150GB 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Drive (hence the similar “X” in the name), the BlacX Docking Station provides a secure and stable platform for both 2.5” and 3.5” SATA I and II hard drives, with a high-speed USB 2.0 connection. Compact, durable, affordable and highly effective, Thermaltake had another innovative winner on their hands. But they didn’t stop there. They upped the ante with a built-in USB 2.0 hub for additional flexibility and convenience—the BlacX SE.

Packaging and Contents

Whether it’s hardware or the box it comes in, sometimes things that are the most simple can also be the most powerful and effective. Case in point: both the Thermaltake BlacX SE and its box. A glossy, solid black cube with the unmistakable BlacX SE logo set off with just a hint of spotlight, and a photo of the unit, graces the front of the box. Thermaltake’s logo and their “Cool all Your Life” is almost subdued by comparison. Although it would probably be obvious when you pick up the box, a hard drive is not included with the unit—and it says so in fine print on each side of the box where photos of the BlacX SE are present (you know the old saw about always reading the fine print). In not-so-fine print are icons for the Thermaltake BlacX SE’s 3-year warranty, tool-free operation, compatibility with Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Mac OS 10.0 or later; and its Green-friendly RoHS compliancy.

On the right is a larger BlacX SE logo that seems to burn its way through the solid wall of blackness behind it. The left side has a photo of the BlacX SE with a Western Digital Raptor X installed, minus the SE’s cover on the left, and a photo of another BlacX SE with a 2.5” laptop drive installed on the right. Package contents are bullet-listed underneath. On the back, you’ll find a full list of features, specifications, and a top-down photo of the BlacX SE with callouts in red pointing to the location of the Power Switch, HDD Release Button and the built-in USB 2.0 Hub. Open the box and you’ll find the BlacX SE sealed in a bag and secured inside a thick, cardboard shipping protector with its bagged and bubble-wrapped accessories placed in the two compartments next to it: a 12V/2A DC Power Adaptor, USB Cable, and a Quick User Guide.

The Thermaltake BlacX SE’s packaging is more than capable of protecting the contents to make sure that you receive them unscathed, and that the box will literally jump off the store shelf and grab your attention with its bold yet simple and effective styling. It actually looks good enough to keep around as a geeky “display piece.” If there’s any fault to find with the box, it’s that the glossy black finish is prone to showing fingerprints and smudges...

Of course, we’re not buying the BlacX SE for the box…

The Thermaltake BlacX SE HDD Docking Station

Unlike the BlacX HDD Docking Station whose diameter isn’t that much larger than your average coffee cup, at 5.12 x 3.55 x 2.56” (130 x 90 x 65 mm) the footprint of BlacX SE’s is much larger due to the 4-port USB 2.0 hub integrated into the front of the base. Made of tough, ABS plastic and resembling a large iPod-like docking cradle, the BlacX SE has the same dark charcoal “no fingerprints” semi-gloss finish as its smaller cousin.

What the BlacX SE also has that the standard BlacX doesn’t, is a smoke colored see-through cover that tilts forward for drive insertion. Once the drive has been installed, you tilt the cover back and snap it shut. The cover is not just cosmetic. It helps secure the drive in place once it’s been inserted into the BlacX SE and shields the top of the hard drive—and your fingers from the heat it produces. The Power and Hard Disk Power/Access LEDs are clearly labeled, as are the individual USB ports.

Tip the hard drive cover forward and looking down into the BlacX SE’s cradle, you’ll see the very simple yet effective mechanism Thermaltake has devised for making quick and safe insertion and disconnecting of both 2.5” and 3.5” SATA drives, possible. Female SATA data and power jacks are surrounded by a metal release bar activated by the button on the left-hand side of the unit. The spring-loaded stop that allows you to align and properly insert a 2.5” drive, compresses into the cradle’s base when a larger 3.5” drive is inserted.

On the back of the BlacX SE are jacks for the USB cable and power cord, and a protruding push-button style power button that makes it easier to reach around and find without having to look behind the unit. There is also a knock-out plug for an eSATA port, which Thermaltake might add to future revisions of the BlacX SE at some later date.

Turn the BlacX SE over and you’ll find a pair of crescent-shaped anti-skid rubber feet that, combined with the weight of the base, will keep the BlacX SE firmly planted on almost any surface. Like many USB external drive devices and powered hubs, the BlacX SE is plug ‘n play-ready for its supported operating systems without the need of additional drivers or software.

Here’s a summary of the Thermaltake BlacX SE’s features:

● Patented Design

● RoHS Compliance

● Supports All 2.5” & 3.5” SATA HDDs up to 1TB!

● 4-Port USB 2.0 Hub

● Hot-Swap Capability for Rapid Multi HDDs Access & Exchange

● Supports USB 2.0 Transfer Speed up to 480Mbps

● Windows & Mac OS Compatible

● Compact Docking Station Design maximizes Heat Dissipation & Exhaust

● Windows Vista Ready!

Installation/Setup

The Quick User Guide included with the Thermaltake BlacX SE is more of a formality than a necessity, as using the BlacX SE is practically self-explanatory just by looking at it. Plug in your cables and flip the front cover forward. Resting the drive against the rear support, slide it down into place until you feel the male SATA connectors click into place into the female SATA ports in the cradle’s base. While you may have to press a bit more firmly with some SATA drives, you should not have to use excessive force. If you do, that means you’ve either put the drive in backwards or you don’t have it lined up properly. SATA connectors on hard drives are fragile, and it doesn’t take much to break one or both of them off (trust me on this one).

Snap the drive cover shut. Connect the USB cable to an available USB port on your PC and push the Power button. Both LEDs on the BlacX SE will light up. Windows will detect the drive, which will appear as a USB Mass Storage DeviceàGeneric External USB Device under the Safely Remove Hardware system tray applet. If not, double-check your USB connection and make sure the drive is fully seated in the BlacX SE. Once the drive is detected, you’re free to use it as you would any other hard drive. In order to take advantage of the USB hub, you’ll need to leave the BlacX SE powered up after removed the hard drive.

To disengage the drive from the BlacX SE, flip the drive cover open and press down on the button on the left side of the unit. Remember that release bar sitting in the base of the cradle that I was talking about earlier? It will safely disengage the drive from the SATA Connectors without putting the kind of stress on them that can break them—something that can happen all too often when disconnecting some SATA cables that hold on just a bit too firmly for their own good.

Modern 7,200 RPM hard drives can generate a surprising amount of heat. And to say that Western Digital’s 10,000 RPM Raptor-series drives can get more than a little “toasty” after a few hours of operation would be the mother of all understatements. A hard drive inserted into the BlacX SE does not have the benefit of direct cooling via fans as it would if it were installed in a PC or external drive enclosure. Instead, it relies on the air around it to shed heat passively. During the benchmark session with the BlacX SE, the test drive became uncomfortably hot to the touch. In spite of the advertised rapid hard drive hot-swapping capabilities of the BlacX SE, depending on just how hot the particular drive you have inserted gets while in use, you might want to save your fingers and a few choice expletitives and wait a bit for the drive to cool down before unplugging it and popping in another.

Setup wasn’t a problem for me either on my laptop or the system I used for the benchmarks. Once the drive was plugged into the BlacX SE, it stayed firmly in place until I removed it. The release button worked smoothly without binding and disengaged the drives without issue. The transformer brick on the end of the power cord thankfully wasn’t the huge kind that hogs multiple plugs on a power strip. It would have been nice if the cord itself were a bit longer, though. The blue LEDs are bright enough to see from almost any angle or working position without being overbearingly bright. Hot swapping was, for the most part, smooth and uneventful, as it should be for a device advertised as such. There were several occasions however, when I had to power the BlacX SE off and on again for Windows to recognize the drive. And of course, it goes without saying that you should make sure that there's no disk activity going on before disengaging the drive.

Benchmarks

Test System Configuration:

A Seagate ST3500630AS Barracuda 7200.10 500 GB SATA II Hard Drive was plugged into the Thermaltake BlacX SE HDD Docking Station for the tests.

I used the read and write disk benchmarks from EVEREST Ultimate Edition v4.50.1330 to measure throughput on the Abit IP35 PRO’s USB controller. For a “real world test” I copied my 11.8 GB Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion installation from the C:\Program Files\Bethesda\Oblivion folder, which represents a good mix of small, medium and large-sized files down to the target drive in the BlacX SE. Thread Factory’s Elapsed Time v4 (Evaluation Edition) was used to measure how long it took to copy all the files.

The option for write caching was enabled on the BlacX SE’s drive. While write caching maximizes disk drive performance, it also requires that the Safely Remove Hardware system tray applet be used to disconnect the drive properly from the host system to prevent data corruption or loss.

I’m going to be comparing the results to the ones I achieved using an identical pair of Seagate drives in RAID 0 and 1 in the Sans Digital’s MobileSTOR MS2UTN+ using its USB 2.0 controller. Keep in mind that the performance results shown here will vary depending on your individual hardware configuration and other factors.

Let’s take a look at the synthetic EVEREST benchmarks first.

The slower overall performance on all the EVEREST benchmarks of RAID 1 should be no surprise, given the additional overhead required for mirroring the first drive to the second in the MS2UTN+. The obvious overhead involved in striping a pair of drives might be surprising to some, since RAID 0 is considered a higher performance yet non-redundant RAID mode. The only place where RAID 0 comes out ahead of the single 500GB drive inside the BlacX SE the most is Average Write Access Times, with a tiny margin in Average Reads.