[SOLVED] Using HDD docking station

[smalltownusa]

Afternoon all,
Am building an HTPC (this is my second one as the first one is more than 10 years old). I have four HDDs in my old system I want to use in my new one. I am using Silverstone ATX GD09B as my case and MSI B450 Tomahawk Max for my motherboard. It appears from the GD09 manual it will not support four 3.5 inch hdd drives like my old one. So, am considering getting 1 or 2 hdd docking stations. There appear to be several brands out there. Anyone have a suggestion as to the one(s) to get. The MSI supports usb 3.2 so I know I want a docking station with this capability. As I have never used a hdd docking station, are there any gotchas? I have four Synology NAS' and know I could add another but do not want to go to the expense of another NAS at this time. Also, are the hdd docking stations very noisy?

Thanks for your comments,
Harold

 

[Newtonius]

Get a 2 bay docking station, they're pretty useful, especially if you want to clone a drive to another drive.

I have this:
https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Exte...argid=aud-829758849484:pla-564037935583&psc=1

If you're just using HDD's you don't need more than a USB 3.0 variant external docking station, they will provide enough bandwidth for data transfer speeds (about 5Gb/s or 648MB/s). Typically USB 3.1 or 3.2 gen docking stations will be pricey and offer more than you'll need for HDD's.

A major con:
If you have a double bay station, or higher, and it's a 3.0 gen variant you will be bottle-necked in data speeds when using both drives to 100%. For example, reading from both drives at the same time could reduce the performance to near half for both drives. This is when a 3.2 model would be beneficial, but would still cost a bunch for a rare-use feature.

These are the pros and cons of external bays. pretty plain and simple, just know what you have, what you need, and what you'll be doing and you can decide confidently. In the end, it's still convenient owning one, I don't regret mine.

 

[smalltownusa]

John,
Thanks for the quick reply and info. Just what I needed. Have ordered one via Amazon. I will use it to play movies/tv programs stored on the drives. Thus, I will probably never need to read both of them simultaneously.

Harold