You know what I love about being The Gadgeteer? Those times when one of my friends or co-workers say something like “I sure wish I had a gadget that would allow me to [fill in the blank].” Just the other day, I overheard someone say that they wished they had a quick and dirty way to connect a bare SATA hard drive to their computer to copy files from it. I immediately told them that I had just what they needed, the 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA HDD dock with USB hub from Brando.
The 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA HDD dock with USB hub (known from here on as the dock) is actually one of three products that I have, all offering the same functionality. The two other products, also from Brando, are the USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE Adapter with One Touch Backup and the Brando USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE Cable. All three products allow a person to connect an SATA drive to a computer via USB. But this latest product that I’m reviewing today, is significantly easier to use. It’s just not quite as portable as the other two…
Package Contents
Dock
USB A to B cable
AC adapter
UK, US and Europe power cords
User guide (in Japanese)
The dock has a 5.125 x 3.5 x 2.5 inch footprint and weighs in at 2 pounds, which allows it to remain stationary on your desk. It’s not going to slide around when you’re plugging and unplugging drives and USB gadgets.
It’s made of Black plastic, with rubber feet on the bottom. On the front face are four USB 2.0 ports and on the back side you will find the power switch, power cord socket and USB A connector.
On the top of the dock, there is a spring loaded door that is used to support a 2.5″ drive or it can fold down to accommodate a 3.5″ drive. Either sized SATA drive can be plugged into the dock. Below the drive bay, is an oval status LED and an eject button.
I only had a 3.5″ SATA drive to test with this dock. Plugging it in is easy. You don’t have to worry about lining up the connectors as the slot opening is sized perfectly. Ejecting the drive when you want to remove it, is equally effortless.
To use this product, you just connect the included AC adapter, plug it into an outlet, connect the included USB cable to the dock and your computer, insert a 2.5 or 3.5 inch SATA drive in the dock, press the power button and enjoy. Yes, it’s that easy and a big reason why I like this solution way better than the other solutions I’ve reviewed in the past. You gotta love plug and play.
Having an additional four USB ports is pretty handy as well. I tested this dock with my iMac and had no problems at all. I didn’t have any issues copying files, playing movies or listening to music directly from the connected hard drive. I also tested the USB hub by plugging in four USB flash drives and was able to copy data, play media, etc. from them as well. Copying files to and from the connected hard drive and a connected USB flash drive worked fine too. The only slight weirdness that I noticed was that when pressing the eject button in the Mac finder to eject the hard drive, the whole finder would vanish.
This dock is a great thing to have tucked away in a drawer for those times when someone has a hard drive that needs cloned or a set of files copied onto it before installing it in a desktop PC. It’s even useful to use it all the time as an external drive for your desktop / laptop.
Product Information
| Price: | 82.0 |
| Manufacturer: | Century Corporation |
| Retailer: | Brando USB |
| Requirements: |
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| Pros: |
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Good stuff. I don’t have a need for this myself but I’ve emailed your review to two people I think might find a use for it.
“the whole finder would vanish”. I think this needs a bit more detail. if, say, I am ejecting a drive (i.e. a memory card) from my mac while having that very drive active as a finder window, then it vanishes. if the active drive in the finder is something else (the mac’s hdd) then only the ejected drive will vanish (from the the list) but the finder won’t close.
can you please describe which of the above happens, if any?
thanks!
Do this come in PATA flavor too?
My XBOX broke down and now I have a 200GB PATA drive doing nothing.
geakz:
Thanks!
andi:
I will test this again tonight just to make 100% sure, but I don’t think the drive in the dock was the active drive when I ejected it. I’ll find out and report back.
vm-01:
Brando carries a couple different flavors of this dock, but they are all SATA. No IDE versions that I know of… You might still be able to do the cable thing like the products I link to at the top of the review.
You were right, the finder only disappears when I’m viewing the hard drive in the dock. This doesn’t happen with flash drives though. I can be viewing their contents and eject them with no ill effects. After the drive is ejected, the view will be replaced with all mounted devices.
Julie: my macbook never kept the finder alive on the desktop when I’m ejecting something that was active in its window. but then again, this is my first and only mac. oh no, wait – my wife says hers does the same. ibook G4.
🙂 shall we launch a poll?
What version of OS X are you running? I’m running the latest rev of Leopard.
10.4.11 Tiger. sorry it took so long, I had to figure out where to look for… err, I had no Internet access 🙂 so anyway, this is one of the 1st gen Macbooks to hit the European market.
I’ve seen this puppy before I think it was on Gizmodo a while back – its a great piece of kit.