On Our Desk - 13

ThermalTake BlacX A HDD Dock

Manufacturer: Thermaltake
UK Price (as reviewed): £25.00 (inc. Delivery)
US Price as reviewed: $32.99 (inc. Delivery)

At bit-tech, we often find ourselves putting together quick-build PCs or swapping hard drives over. When you’ve got this much testing going on all the time, it’s just really hard to keep track of what hard drives have what on them and where they are.

And, yes, it isn’t made any easier by the rampant untidiness of our desks or the never-diminishing pile of boxes in the corner of the office.

As you can imagine then, a decent hard drive dock is essential – it’s just a wonder we’ve never had one in before.

The Thermaltake BlacX A then is a fairly simple solution to a problem that most normal PC users rarely experience, but hardware testers will certainly benefit from. Obviously unless you’re really constantly swapping hard drives over there's little need for it, but even then at some point in our lives we've all wanted or used an external hard drive to backup or transport data, and the BlacX A makes it just that bit more simple.


The BlacX A is big and weighty first off, so it isn’t going to topple over as you slam your hard drives in heedlessly. The build quality feels reassuring too, with the exception of the slightly plasticy eject button that lacks a reassuring "click". It rates between a "Meh" and "OK" on the Martin Test.

Compatibility is fairly limited and, even though the BlacX A can handle both 2.5” and 3.5” drives comfortably with a size of up to one terabyte, we can’t help but shake the feeling that it’s missing a trick here. There’s a lot to be said for sure, safe and simple design, but there’s also a lot to be praised in a hard drive dock that comes with a USB hub and card reader built in - it's already sitting on your desktop after all. C’est la vie.

Still, it isn’t all downhill and as far as hard drives go the BlacX A is very much a one-stop shop. It’s got eSATA support at up to 3Gb/s for those times when you need speed and power quickly, but it also has a USB 2.0 connection at a much slower (shared) 480MB/s too if you’re PC or notebook doesn't have that fangled new feature.

So, what the BlacX A lacks in terms of extra features, it certainly compensates for in terms of straightforwardness and stability.

One thing which did strike us as a little bit unusual however was one of the extras included in the case – a big black rubber jacket to cover the top of whichever drive you have in the dock. It’s tight-fitting and supposed to protect the drive against nicks and scrapes. Richard calls it a disk condom and innuendos about "inserting hard drives" predictably ensued.


What’s unusual about it though is that there’s only one. Surely if you just had one drive in and out of the dock then you’d be better off just putting the drive actually inside your computer, assuming it isn’t filled already? Giving users two or three of these little jackets would seem a better idea, especially if you make them different colours so that users can mark their drives.

In use, the dock is plain and simple to work with and the eject button, though a little flimsy-feeling is exactly what it needs to be. One of the things we do like about the dock too, but which we didn’t get a chance to test, is that it should work with any Windows or Mac OS without making you fiddle with drivers and so on (providing the drive is formatted the right way).

Still at the end of the day, the BlacX A doesn’t exactly stand out. It’s good, it works and it does what it says on the tin, sure – but it doesn’t offer anything above and beyond the latest military FPS. There’s no fancy bits, no extra hubs – it’s just a one slot dock for hard drives so it doesn’t really stand out of the market it sits in.

Verdict: A solid, if somewhat unremarkable hard drive dock, the BlaX A is a safe choice for any drive-swappers in a hurry.

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