Saw various deals on HDD docking stations recently. It's a USB2.0 interface plastic box with a slot in the top for a SATA HDD. You just stick a bare SATA HDD in the slot and away you go. Sort of like an iPod dock. Has it's own wall wart for power and an on/off switch on the back of the box. Looked like a cheap way to use standard HDD's for backup without a lot of fuss. Anyone tried these kind of products ?
Yes, I use one of these. It has both an eSata and a USB 2.0 interface. I use eSata because it's 3 gb/s instead of 480 mb/s.
Here are some observations:
1) It uses sata drives. The sata drive connector is only rated for 50 connect/disconnect cycles. So swapping drives a lot may wear out the connector on the drive/dock station.
2) Whatever you use for the drive, you still need backup software. I used to use Norton Ghost, I have since moved to Acronis Home.
3) I mainly use this to transport huge (30 GB) files between a desktop and a laptop. The files are for virtual machines that I run. I don't do backups very often. Since the files themselves are the virtual machines, they ARE the backup.
4) eSata connection is nice, but while the physical connection does in theory support hot-swap, no OS (linux or Windows) supports it. So to remove, you have to shutdown the machine. (Obviously, USB doesn't have this issue - but it's a lot slower).
5) The main reason, this is a good solution for me that as drives get more capacity, I just plug in a new drive. I am currently using a couple of Seagate 1 TB drives.
6) I probably have at least 4 outboard USB enclosed drives that I have purchased over many years that are now so small for capacity and can't be upgraded that I got tired of wasting my money on them. (120 MB (yes MB), 100 GB, 120 GB, 250 GB). My electronics closet is a graveyard of these things and they're pretty much worthless to me.