New HDD enclosure vs. HDD docking station

[kdon27]

I have an Elements WD 2TB external hard drive (SATA) - the port to connect the USB cable has broken off and cannot be soldered back onto the board.

I believe the hard drive is still working but I cannot be absolutely certain until I actually test it out.

Therefore I need to buy either a new enclosure or an HDD docking station.

My question is: which should I buy for these purposes?

- I regularly need to back-up the data from my laptop to this hard drive

And...

- Must be able to access the same files from my PC regularly.

Many thanks

 

[phil22]

I would go with an enclosure if you only have a single external drive to access. The drive is also less likely to damaged by careless handling if it's firmly seated in an enclosure compared to it sticking out of a docking station.

A docking station makes more sense only if you regularly need to access several bare hard drives externally as the dock occupies only one USB port on your PC, whereas if you bought enclosures for them all, they all need separate USB ports to connect to.

 

[kdon27]

Best answer selected by kdon27.