Docking Stations, bad for sata connectors?

[GeezerMan]

I'd like to get a docking station 3.5" drive size, for occasional use. Anyone have personal testimony of wear and tear on the sata connectors?

Also, why buy a special docking station, when I can use a regular external hard drive enclosure with the lid off?

 

[sdifox]

Do you deal with a lot of bare drives? That is what the docking station is for.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I use them for my backups. Cheaper than a tape drives and hard drives are only slightly more expensive than tapes.

Never noticed any issue with sata connector.

 

[Arcanedeath]

Sata connectors are not very durable and the spec is around 150ish insertions before failure or going out of spec, except for some enterprise drives which have more durable connectors.