What are the disadvantages of external docking stations for hard drives?

English Hardware
#1

Thinking about a docking station will be able to plug 2.5" and 3.5" hard drives into seems very attractive. I get the benefit of external drives without the cost of external enclosures. Any pitfalls I should be aware of?

#2

From my experience

  1. Drive connectivity (eg ATA, SATA, SAS, etc). Technology advances and hardware obsoletes. So, depends on the time frame you expect to use our device. Another example, USB2/3.
  2. Docking stations are usually specific to a particular model, but some do use a universal connection (eg PCMCIA, USB)

Docking stations can be good to enable multiple I/O with a single connection. Besides drives, you can have a regular keyboard/mouse, audio and video connections ready to connect to your laptop with a single connection.

HTH,
TSU

#3

I know of two drawbacks.

The connectors of hard drives have very limited lifetime, perhaps allowing 50-200 connections before they break. The same applies to connectors of docking stations. The layer of gold on contacts is quite thin.

Most mechanical HDs don’t like to work in inclined positions in which the docks hold them sometimes. Inclined position is position when the platters are in neither horizontal nor vertical planes.

#4

When I search for docking stations, I found that a HDD docking station with clone function, it seems more functional and convenient. Does that station still has these disadvantages?

#5

On 2014-01-21 03:16, hopedec wrote:
>
> When I search for docking stations, I found that a HDD docking station
> with clone function, it seems more functional and convenient. Does that
> station still has these disadvantages?

Have you ever seen that clone function work in Linux? I haven’t.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

#6

Most docking stations for hard drives are built too thin. Their lifetime is unexpectedly small.

#7

Here is the hard drive docking station with clone function I found.

#8

On 2014-01-24 08:26, hopedec wrote:
>
> Here is the ‘hard drive docking station’ (http://tinyurl.com/om564tz)
> with clone function I found.

I would not rely on that feature. No reporting, no control.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

#9

Hi.

I need your suggestions. Which external hard drive to purchase now , or which one to to avoid ? The one with,I think 1 or 2 tb size as I wish to store music , images, movies and Marantz AV receiver specifies no greater than 2 tb capacity USB2.0 and self powered.

Thanks!