Question 1

Will I see any speed difference between this and a SATA II enclosure? I will have a SATA III hard drive.

Accepted Answer

In theory, YES.  SATA II is max throughput of 300MB/s.  USB 3.0 is supposed to be 400 MB/s, with Blue USB 3.0 cables.  And you are going to be putting a SATA III, 600 MB/s HDD in the enclosure.  Say there's a lot of I/O data happening, and perhaps we can think of you driving your fast  car on a 6-lane Expressway!  Then up ahead 2 of the lanes are shut down, so you and everyone has to merge and slow down to get through with just 4 lanes.  But then it gets worse for you and the same amount of traffic with you when another lane is shut down ahead.  Now you've only got a 3 lane freeway, or SATA II.  Does that make sense?
  I bought the Thermaltake ST0020U enclosure to add a 3.5 inch WDC, SATA  iii Hard Drive I had in a 10 year old Desktop to a new Laptop with intel CORE i7, etc.  It  has 6 USB 3.0 ports among other modern things.
Hard Drive utilities tell me both it and another 1 TB, SATA III HDD are connected at 480 MB/s.  Cheers!;-))

Question 2

When using a SATA III drive connected to PC with USB 3.0, what is your real world transfer speed using this enclosure?

Accepted Answer

Hi Sean.
Sorry, no numbers for you but it's quick. Takes full advantage of SATA 6 speeds.

I've never tried it with a regular HD (sata 3/7200rpm), bought mine to take advantage of the speeds of a 10K SATA 6 1TB velociraptor. Wow, it smokes all my SATA 6 USB 3 external drives.

Remember to use this enclosure to full potential you need USB 3, correct cable and a SATA 6 drive.

Only advice I can give you is this is a stand up only enclosure. You can't lay it down and those 2 fans you see are intakes. You have to leave room for them to breath and you need to vacuum them because the grill holds dust. Hot air blows out bottom, directed to both sides. As hot air rises on intake side , fans must suck it right back in. Leave plenty of "breathing" room on the fan side of the enclosure.........Raymond

Question 3

How powerful is the air that blows out from the bottom?  My desk tends to get dusty quick so I don't want dust blowing around.

Accepted Answer

Seems that there is not a huge volume of concentrated air coming from it. It moves air but the case appears to be well vented . I doubt it would blow dust around much

Question 4

will this work with windows 8? It does not say that windows 8 is supported but I don't see why it would not work with windows 8.

Accepted Answer

I used this with windows 7 64bit with a 4tb drive inside. Even though it stated it wasnt forba 4tb it did work however it will not recognize the drive. I had to format the drive nd create a new partition from the allocated space. Also the drive in it will not auto shutdown after u turn ur pc off. You need to pull the power cord from it to turn it off but to answer ur question then yes it should work.

Question 5

So will a 4TB HDD not work in this enclosure?  Ad states upto 3TB...

Accepted Answer

answered on another site : No, it won't. I contacted Thermaltake with a similar question. Here is their reply: "The Max 5g (ST0020U) can only read hard drives up to 3TB. There is no firmware update for the system to work with 4TB hard drives. Please check out the BlacX 5g (ST0019). This is another Thermaltake docking station that is compatible with up to 4TB hard drives"
Jude Santos answered on April 14, 2014

Question 6

Can anybody confirm that this enclosure supports a 3TB drive as a single volume?

Accepted Answer

I cannot and from what I read I concluded not worth the risk and went with 2 GB after reviewing the technical reasons.  Great enclosure though.  I've been using it as a 24/7 accessed NAS with a WD red series through an ASUS router. Zero problems, been running a few months.

Question 7

Does this enclosure support S.M.A.R.T. Drive Reporting?

Accepted Answer

I think your question needs to be directed to the HD manufacturer or the OS operating your USB controller or the maker of the controller it self. ..........................................I am able to monitor life and condition through a WD program. I'm running W10, intel USB3 controller and a WD 1TB 10K velociraptor all are SATA3. I use one for storage and the rest for scratch disks. This is simply a plastic enclosure with a fan and an on/off switch and circuitry to convert USB3 to SATA3 and back at an advertised rate of 5GB's. Best I've seen is 28-30MB's writes using my 10K disks.
This enclosure should be fine for smart monitoring if all your other parts are compatable.......RRK

Question 8

4TB
Compatibility?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Running a WD black 4TB in there.
Raymond

Question 9

I have two 2009 SATA 3.0 Hitachi Deskstar 500GB  Hard drives from my old PC I would like to be able to access from my new PC. I wish to do so using an external enclosure and USB 2.0 or higher.
What product suits my requirement?

Accepted Answer

I have been using the Thermaltake 5 and 5G for a long while now and find it to be superb.   The big difference of course is the double fans which take most of all of the heat off the HD.   Have been running a Hitachi Deskstar 2 GB in mine and not a single problem.

Question 10

Is it 3TB total or 3 TB per drive?  I have a 2TB and 3TB I want to take out of my tower and use externally on the router.

Thanks

Accepted Answer

3 TB per drive, but it only holds one HD. Unless you're going to continue swapping those two HDs, you'll need two enclosures.

Questions & Answers