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Experience with USB hard drive docks (I'm full of questions)

B

BrightSideSC

Member
What are some advantages of USB hard drive docks and enclosures over external hard drives? OR the other way around?

Looking for opinions, and maybe some favorite/recommended brands and why?
Thanks!
 
Hmm ? Most external enclosures have USB connections...
Perhaps it is better to link us to which products you are talking about, then we can go from there.
 
Typically, external hard drives use the vendors HDD with their own proprietary enclosure. If you just buy an enclosure, you are open to the type of HDD you want.

The advantage of the external had drive option is that the vendor made an enclosure and HD combination that should be well tested and the performance should be optimal. On the flip side, building your own allows more flexibility but may be more prone to hardware that doesn't work well together.
 
I like docks for the simple fact that you can plug any drive into it and use it and when you're done shut it off, unplug the drive and put it away. I like to use mine to format new drives and transfer the contents of the older drive before I swap it into the internal slot on my pc.
 
I like to use docks to do backups. Idealy you want to use esata for that though. It's nice as you can quickly pop a drive in/out and run a backup job and basically treat the drives like tapes, but the setup will cost a fraction of what a tape setup would.
 
It depends on what you want to use it for.

If you are using it to sneakernet data between computers or to keep data with you as you move about, you'd want an enclosure to protect the drive in transit, and you'll probably have few reasons to ever separate that drive from its enclosure.

If, on the other hand, you're not moving a single drive or two between computers and you instead have multiple drives that you are swapping in and out, a dock is indispensable.


BTW, there's a dock that I use that's mounted in one of my 5.25" bays and has a little door that you push the drive through. Reminds me of a tape backup drive. 😉
 
If you do things like have a rotating set of backup drives, docks are more convenient than fumbling with cables.
 
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