Despite the emergence of devices such assolid state drives, HDDs still remain the main information carriers, especially if its volumes are large. Most often, the hard drives are installed inside the system and connected to the motherboard via eSATA or SATA connectors, however, there are portable drives. It is in such cases, and need a docking station for HDD.
This kind of device is needed by peopleusing HDD-drive instead of a flash drive. Of course, the easiest way is to buy a special container for your hard drive that provides USB connection of the drive to the system. There are no problems with the connection and the owners of full-sized computers. But what should owners of mini-ATX or laptops do if an external drive is purchased and there is no place to connect it? The exit from this situation will be a portable docking station. To review the device in detail, take the "cradle" for the drive, which was recently released by the company AgeStar.
This HDD docking station that the manufacturerHe called the "docking device", is equipped with a power supply, a connector with USB and mini-USB connectors, as well as instructions and software recorded on a CD. The design of the device is impressive. Its smooth lines and silvery-black coloring make an impression of refinement and futurism. A few spoils all this beauty, only the red lever, through which the hard drive is removed from the device. The docking docking compartment is carefully covered with a spring lid, in which a small slot is made.
HDD docking stationsupports drives in two sizes. Winchesters with a 2.5-inch diagonal pass freely through the slot on the lid, and drives that have an inch more diagonal simply push back the spring-loaded shutter. Inside the docking bay there is a SATA connector, to which the drives are connected. To connect the device to the system is very simple. Having installed the HDD in the compartment, you need to connect the power supply to the “dock”, start it by pressing the appropriate button, and then connect it to the computer system using a USB connector. After that, the removable hard disk icon should appear in the drive manager.
The performance of this device is enoughis great. In terms of copying speed, the HDD docking station is not inferior to flash drives or special USB containers for hard drives. Increase the speed of the device prevents USB-bus. As a rule, the copy speed of such tires does not exceed 480 megabits / second, while the minimum speed of SATA connectors is 3 gigabits / second. A nice bonus to this docking station was the function that provides backup copy of the data recorded on the HDD. To start the function, install the software and click the button located on the device.
Judging by this striking example, external docking stations- devices are very useful. They are useful not only to owners of mini-computers. As a rule, a full-sized system unit is not equipped with such a device, even SSD docking stations are not always found in them. To remove or connect the hard drive, you have to open the case, which is not particularly convenient. From here such minor inconveniences and saves the external "dock".