Hi,I have a spare sata 500gb hdd.Thinking of getting a caddy to hold this drive so that I can make use of it,On the other hand I have seen desktop docking station for a hdd.
Just want to know which one would be the best to get.
A Caddy or the docking station?
Thanks in advance
I'm not sure what ports you have on your computer, but this is what I use and love it. It works very well and drives can be switched out in 10 seconds.
Newegg.com - Thermaltake BlacX ST0005U External Hard Drive SATA Enclosure Docking Station 2.5” & 3.5” USB 2.0 & eSATA
My only concern with the dock is that there is no cooling for the drive. If the drive runs cool, then this is probably a non-issue. I have both, drives in caddies and the dock linked above, and they both work very well. One advantage of the dock is that you can swap drives quickly. I use it on my desk to create images or recover data.
A drive is more susceptible to damage from static electricity in a dock, especially if you handle it a lot.
I use docks - USB2, USB3 and eSata. But I have many spare disks that I switch a lot - so that is more practical. For a single HDD I guess a caddy is OK.
Never had a cooling problem. The docks are open and the disk sticks out. I would think that a cheap caddy without a fan is more problematic.
I have also had good experience with the docks. Easy swapping and perfect for user data migration during re-builds etc.
Have rarely experienced heating problems but depends how much disk activity is going on of course.
A 1TB drive I was working with got a bit warmer than I liked once, but that was easily solved by pointing a small external USB fan at it. Did the trick very nicely.
Jim, that is hard to say. I have about 20 external drives - all sizes and shapes. I had only one fail on me up to now and that was the controller inside the box (a WD). Once I took it out of the box and stuck it into a dock, it was working again.
I think those disks are pretty robust - unless you drop them. But from what I read from many others, there seems to be a life expectency between 2 days and 10 years.
Howeverr, I would not push my luck. If a unit shows signs of weakening, I would not put essential data on it.
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