Look at this, its about time someone made good use of the hot-swappable physique of the SATA connector. I can finally take advantage of my many spare SATA drives without having to buy a external enclosure for each of them. I just take the drive out of its anti-static wrapping, mate it with the BlacX, and watch OSX’s Time Machine do its magic…
No seriously, I really needed to improve my backup system. As it stood, someone robbing my house could have easily taken all of my digital life with them, but now, I would still have that hidden drive. The next step is protection against fire and other natural disasters, but for that, I just need another loose drive that I could keep at a friend’s place. Aaaahhh, backups, sometimes, I wish I could still think like the profane, that computers contain a certain type of smoke, and that once the smoke is released, it stops working. But no, I have witnessed too many case of data loss (A few years ago, one guy showed at our service desk with his masters on a fried hard drive) and I still pride myself in saying that I have not been a victim of technology yet.
Philosophy aside, when I received the unit, it had a loose part inside of it. I then began to ponder whether I should return it or just void the warranty, but as it turned out, the unit did not have any sticker (I probably would have done it anyway), as if Thermaltake wanted you to have a look. Moments later, I had found the culprit: a screw. But before putting it back in place, I took a good glance at the insides of the unit and was surprised at how simple and well built it was. Sturdy plastics, thick PCB and simple mechanics that are not going to break any time soon and even if they do, it would be easily fixed. I want to see more products made this way.
If you are planning on getting one, consider the BlacX to be ISO me.