Hard Drive Docks-What do you think?

[bruced530]

<p >Always a quandry where to store your images, and everyone has a different way.Well my question today is about Hard drive docks and what your opinion is of them.<br />I've been doing quite a bit of research(yes that does include doing searches here as well) ,there's no question of needing it but whats the best way?<br />Right now I don't have a great amount of images. I think the best thing I've done is to become more critical of my images in the first place and just get rid of ones that are only so-so.<br />So to the question at hand. I have looked at external drives and some like the WD Passport seem like a good way to go, but after doing a bit of reading the hard drive docks like this one <br /><a href="http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3516746&CatId=2785" target="_blank">http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3516746&CatId=2785</a><br />seem like a good option.Next is the choice of hard drives, again I used to like Seagate, but after getting bought out they seem to have gone straight down hill. So WD seems to be the way to go from what I've read.<br />Right now I store my images on DVD's for my 20D.<br />So what are your opinions on this? I would like to get this done soon.</p>

[jarle_aasland]

<p>I bought a SATA hard drive docking station on eBay a while ago. It was listed as "2.5/3.5 SATA HDD Dock USB Hub/SDHC SD TF Card Reader" and sold for only $30 from a seller in Hong Kong, I think. <br /> <br /> Connects to your PC with a standard USB cable and works flawlessly. Just insert the hard drive into the docking station, plug in the USB cable and access it like any other hard drive. Great for backing up huge amounts of data. Seen here with a 1 TB Western Digital drive:</p>

<p><img src="http://aasland.smugmug.com/photos/572153871_XxPNm-M.jpg" alt="" width="536" height="450" /><br>

Jarle</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>Bare drives are pretty fragile, physically and electronically. I use a docking station like the one above for programming or reading internal drives, but not for data storage.</p>

<p>On the other hand, there are docking enclosures which enclose protect the drive, but require an often bulky docking station. I use Lian-Li RH58 docking enclosures for a multi-track audio recorder, and similar devices made by Glyph. The computer interface for these stations is SCSI, Firewire, USB or eSATA, depending on the application. Glyph drives are hot-swappable because each enclosure has the host electronics. Most docked drives must be powered down before swapping (hot swaps will trash the drive and interface).</p>

<p>Mostly, I put 3-1/2" SATA-300 drives into small, self-contained enclosures with an USB interface (eSATA is available, but inconvenient, and I don't need the speed) and external 12VDC power supply. I can slip a couple of these drives into a laptop bag and have a couple of terabytes at my disposal.</p>