At Amazon, the Sabrent USB SSD docking station.
This little piece of tech has really saved me from having to delete files I’d rather keep, just to make room for new video clips. And because it’s a 4-bay dock, I can keep slapping in drives (it supports up to 16TB hard drives) to ensure I always have space. Even better, the docking station has a fan to keep those drives cooler. This is especially important when working with video, as the read/write speeds will be pushed to their limits, causing heat to build up.
The specs
- Up to 4x 16TB hard drives.
- Supports 2.5-inch SSD SATA drives (up to a maximum thickness of 12.5mm/0.49 Inch (2.75 Inch x 3.93 Inch x 0.49 Inch) with LED indicator for power and HDD access.
- 5 Gbps Transfer Speeds USB 3.0 super speed interface.
- Also compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1.
- Tool-Free Installation.
- Built-in cooling fan that can be switched on and off as needed.
My experience
Quite honestly, there’s not much to say about this simple bit of plastic and metal. It comes in two pieces: the bottom holds the drives, and the top has the fan. An On/Off button and LED indicators also inform you which bays have drives. You’ll find a small magnet that keeps the two pieces together, which makes it easy to pop off the top and insert (or remove) a drive. Finally, on the top portion of the docking station, you’ll find a button to turn the fan on or off.
Speeds
This was a big deal for me. I need to be able to copy those large files to external drives without waiting hours. I have one external drive (that isn’t in the docking station), and its write times are so slow that it can take over an hour to copy an 80GB file.
That won’t do.
The Sabrent docking station gives you transfer speeds of up to 5GB/s. You’ll be just fine if you’re using an SSD capable of high read/write speeds. I recently purchased yet another SSD (this time a Crucial BX500 is a great option. It’s affordable, easy to use, and allows you to expand your storage capacity by a considerable amount. If you want to go really crazy, add four 16TB drives to give you plenty of storage.
This docking bay makes it easy for anyone to plug and play their way to extra storage, so don’t hesitate to buy it if that sounds like a need you have.
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