Bought the unit for a computer with P7P55D Pro motherboard running Linux (Fedora 12). The system recognized the port multiplier without issues; two disks over eSATA worked out of the box. Tested it with two 500G drives (a Seagate and a WDC). Reading from a single drive gives a decent ~75 MB/s; simultaneous reads from two drives drop the rate to 45 MB/s.
A major problem, though: while idle, the drives hover around ~47 degC. With ~1hr of heavy reading, they heat up to ~60 degC (with ambient temps around ~20 degC). The design of this dock blocks _all_ airflow to the bottom end of the drives, leading to severe overheating. This makes BlackX practically useless for duplication of larger drives; they'll overheat/fail long before the duplication has finished. E.g., I managed to copy ~150G of a 500G drive before it hit 60degC and stopped.
Looks like a major design flaw; plan to return it. Thermaltake BlacX Duet eSATA USB Dual Hard Drives Docking Station ST0014U
I bought this mainly for the fast eSata support, but was greatly dissapointed to find out that my computer will not support dual eSata as it doesn't have port multiplier functionality. My computer is fairly new as well and running Windows 7 Professional. Most people won't know if their computer has port multiplier functionality until they buy an item such as this and try it. Dual drives work good using USB, but you only get 400MB transfer rates and not 3GB as you do with eSata. The eSata with 1 drive does work but is somewhat flakey as well. What will happen is at least 25% of the time when you reboot the computer and you are using the dock connected via eSate cable, the computer will lose sight of the dock and tell you there is no eSata dock/drive connected. Only way to redetect the dock and drive is to power down the dock as well as computer, then power on the dock, let the drive initialize for approx. 30 seconds, then power back on the computer. Using the USB cable, this does not happen, so one can only assume the eSata connectivity between the port and the computer is flakey. Other than that, I like the dock as it's fairly light and easy to use amoung several computers to backup and copy data too.
The product works great when you are just reading from the drive on a Mac. The problem comes when you try to write. The drive get's messed up and can't write any longer. You get an Error -50 when you try a write operation. From the finder it's easy to see, but some applications don't handle the error veery well and you can think the file ha been updated when it hasn't. If you force eject the drive and remount you can write to the drive but after a while the error 50 comes up again. The single drive version works great on the Mac but not the double drive version.
I bought a 1TB Western Digital My Book Essential Edition about 3 months ago for my PC-based TV upstairs. It worked fine, then one day just stopped. I could feel it trying to start when I played with the power cord. WD sent me a replacement to try a new power cord, but that didn't solve the problem. I could keep the new drive and send back the old one but there's no way to get all the data off if I do that, so I broke the warranty, popped open the cover, and plugged the old drive in this Thermaltake Duet using the USB connector. (My machine doesn't have an eSATA port; a mistake I won't make again.) My Vista 64-bit machine recognized it and started the drive promptly. Everything is still on my WD drive, and I now have a slot for another drive if I want to expand further.
Before you buy, make sure you do your homework as to what's on your machine. (Duh!!!) If you expect to use eSATA and want to plug in two drives, be sure you have a port multiplier on your eSATA port, which is, apparently, a device on the card ([...]). Might not be easy info to get since I found it mentioned on only one of the dozen+ eSATA controller cards & laptop adapter cards I just looked at. However, some of them mention supporting RAID, and I'm beginning to wonder if that means they must have the multiplier device.
Details specific to Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop:
I tried to use 2 drives via eSATA on my Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop. The laptop could see only drive 1. The message says "A storage device was connected. If this device is a port multiplier, only port 0 of the port multiplier will be active."
After much effort, I found a document from Intel saying that the PM45 express chipset, which the XPS 1640 uses, does not support port multiplier. [...] Document: "Intel® I/O Controller Hub 9 (ICH9) Family Datasheet".
It looks like only ICH9R supports port multiplier. See article [...] The XPS 16 uses ICH9M-E/M.
I am disappointed that I can't use 2 drives on the Duet via eSATA on my (2 month old) XPS 16. Good thing the Duet also comes with a USB connector. With the USB connection, XPS 1640 can see both the drives. Using USB, note that "Safely remove hardware" will release both drives at the same time.
Also, note that Intel Matrix Storage Manager needs to be installed on XPS 1640 to get the "Safely remove hardware" (hot swap) feature for the eSATA connection.
I like Thermaltake products. I have been using their external enclosures for a while. I like the dual drive design. I like the eSATA speed. I wish my laptop supports port multiplier. I am sure more computers will support that in the future, but if you are buying the Duet now, you should check if your computer supports port multiplier via eSATA.
Using USB for 2 drive is just fine. I bought it with the intention to run 2 to 3 virtual machines on each drive at the same time (4 to 6 VM total, concurrent). eSATA would have made a big difference.
As of today, I give the product 4 star --- simply because port multiplier on eSATA is not widely supported as yet. - Hard Drive Dock - Thermaltake - Docking Stations - Esata'
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