Question 1

I have a hard drive from an old computer (Windows ME ?) and want to pull photos off it and on to my new MacBook Pro.  I'm NOT very tech savvy.  Can I do that with this product?

Accepted Answer

First, is your "old" drive SATA or IDE?   Most older PCs used IDE (interface) hard drives!  Second, what is the capacity of the Hard drive? It is likely back in the MegaByte (MB) classes, rather than GigaBytes (GBs)! Then, if it is SATA, what is format of Hard drive: Fat16, FAT32 or NTFS?
I'm not a Mac person, but a search in Google indicates later Mac OSes can read FAT 32 and NTFS hard drives!
For example, search in Google with following:
"how-to-manually-enable-ntfs-read-and-write-in-os-x"
Hope this helps!
I use single and double drive BlacX enclosures, but always with Windowc PCs.

Question 2

will this product work with VISTA? 
with this product can you look at data on hard drive and can you diagnose and try to recover or repair?

my 500 Gbs just went weird i have all my photos for the past 3 years on this drive.

Accepted Answer

I have not tried to use it with VISTA.  I run Windows 7 and it works fine.  When you connect the drive, it shows up as another hard drive just like your primary and any other disks you have on your system.  I have never tried, but I suspect you should be able to defragment etc.

I too have huge store of family photos which I keep on a RAID plus an additional backup drive.  Now and then, I make a copy to a new drive because DRIVES DO FAIL.

Good luck!

Question 3

is this compatible with windows 10?

Accepted Answer

I am currently running windows 10 and I haven't had any problems with detecting the drive through the usb connection. The drive will still need to be formatted correctly in order to read from it, but I was able to take my old drives and make them external storage.

Question 4

Has anyone used this Dock with win 8? I would like to buy one if it will work for win8.

Accepted Answer

I have purchased three of these devices & used them on Win XP & Win 7. I don't see any problem in using it with a Win 8 platform as long as the sata drives you are viewing are not larger than 1.5T.
                Alan

Question 5

Is this dock compatible with the SATA 6.0 disks?  I'm not concerned about getting 6.0 speed, just that a 6.0 disk will work in this dock

Accepted Answer

Yes, we use the Thermaltake BlacX docking stations with drives such as the Western Digital WD VelociRaptor WD5000BHTZ 500GB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Enterprise Hard Drive and the WD5000AZLX 500GB SATA 6.0Gb/s Blue Hard Drive and it works fine.
If you've got an e-SATA port, get the ST0005U docking station with the e-SATA/USB 2.0 connections for faster file transfers.

Question 6

What is the reliability of the drive enclosure?

Accepted Answer

I have two of these devices.  We have a dozen or so hard drives we kept from old computers.  These devices have made it easy to get files off of those drives without having to put it inside another case.  The first had the door break.  It still works fine.  I used it a few days ago to make a copy of all my current data that could be then placed in a fire safe.

I thought enough of this device to buy another one (they're not that expensive) so my wife could make her own backups.  The devices are more than a year old.  I haven't had any technical issues.

I've purchased other products from Thermaltake and all have performed as promised.  I would buy this docking station again.

Question 7

Does this work with Windows 8.1?

Accepted Answer

Yes i have not had any problems with it using Win 8.1

Question 8

Will this work for my Seagate 2tb external harddrive that I dropped?

Accepted Answer

If you broke your drive by dropping it, this will not do anything for it. I bought my Thermaltake to set my laptop up like my desktop. This worked fine. You have to take the drive out of the laptop, hook the device up to the desktop and copy the drie.

Question 9

I have a 1 terabyte transcend external hard drive. Unfortunately the USB 3.0 port broke and i dont have access to it. However upon pulling it apart i noticed the usb port was just a chip that converted 3.0 to SATA and it was just a regular Internal without the chip. If i put the Sata port on this dock can i access the hard drive to recover my files?

Accepted Answer

If I'm understanding you correctly, your external hard drive failed and you need to access the data.  Why can't you just remove the disk from the other enclosure and pop it into this dock?  It supports both 2.5 and 3.5 disks so that should work.  It's only USB 2.0 though, so it won't as fast as your old one.

Question 10

I have a seagate U series 7 IDE internal hard drive with 2.5 inch pin connector. Is this docking station compatible with the hard drive to pull the data off the drive?

Accepted Answer

If you see in the title description of this product that it says SATA and you are telling me that you have an IDE drive which are 2 different technologies this product will NOT work for you. YOU NEED A IDE ENCLOSURE DOCKING STATION .

Questions & Answers