First Impressions

“Why didn’t I think of that?!”

When the BlacX was shown to over a dozen computer techs, that was the gist of their response. Unfortunately no one actually correctly guessed what it was and they only exclaimed this that after we told them what is does and believe it or not, we actually got some pretty far out guesses such as tape degausser & mini ink jet printer. Heck, I know it was my response and that sums up the ingeniousness of this unit. If you have ever had to swap out multiple hard drives in a day to look for important data, or if you have ever done the deep freeze trick to restore a dead hard drive you can see instantly see the attraction to this device. The BlacX has the fastest hard drive “installation” we have ever seen and calling it a docking station and not a hard drive enclosure is certainly one of the best examples we have seen lately of truth in advertising; after all the hard drive is not really enclosed now is it!

When one first picks this unit up it becomes startlingly obvious that while it may be small it is no light weight. As we will get into later, this unit is weighted and has a very low center of gravity so you do not have to worry about your hard drive tipping over if you bump it while it is in use; this of course disregards the potential cow bell effect that you may hear if you bump the hard drive hard enough to have its heads slam into the platters. This low center of gravity does come at a price in that it is actually a lot heavier than many regular full size hard drive enclosures. It would be fair to say that you would not want to drop it into your pocket to transport anywhere (unless you are into the ghetto style pants around your ankles, butt hanging in the breeze style... Depending on how you plan to use the BlacX the decrease in size is negated by its brick-like weight.

Speaking of bricks, that is actually a pretty apt description of what the BlacX feels like in your hands. It may be small, but in a pinch you could probably bludgeon someone to death with it. As flimsy, wimpy plastic enclosures may sound like a great idea but in reality they break way too easily, where as this really is a Mad Max’esq Road Warrior (complete with never say die attitude …just without the psychotic tendencies).

When one finally gets over the shock of its weight the next thing one notices is that its door flap is keyed to make insertion of not only 3.5” hard drives a snap but also 2.5” ones as well. It has been our sad experience that very few units can claim to be user friendly for both 3.5" and 2.5" drives as they usually have to make too many compromises to conform to these widely different sizes. This unit of course doesn’t need to support the whole drive just its front face so difference in height really is irrelevant. It is the little things like this that show just how good the design & engineering is that went into this unit.


The case itself is made entirely of smooth black plastic and is designed to be utilitarian to the point that even an ascetic monk wouldn’t find this unit garish or gaudy. On the front of the dock you have a small and (for Thermaltake) subdued BlacX logo and a downright minuscule Thermaltake logo, with the rest being solid black.


The top of the unit is about the only place any nod to fashion was given; not only is the top gracefully banked (to make hard drive insertion easier) but also has not only a big (boring black once again) ejection button but a blue/red LED as well. However, even here Thermaltake went for the subdued route and most of the blue light is blocked by a black plastic insert that only allows an eerie ring of blue to escape and draw your eyes in. This led is not here just for looks rather is the only way you can tell when the power is on, and when it glows red it means that the hard drive is active (both of which are times when yanking a hard drive from the docking station probably would counter-indicated).

The back of the device while not as bleak as the front, nor stylish as the top, actually has a lot more going on. This is where the power button, the power connection and even the USB connection are located. However, even this relatively copious amount of visual stimuli is somehow rendered inert and subdued by the white on black colour contrast.

Overall, there really is nothing bad to say about this unit. It looks, acts and feels like it’s built to some obscure military specification (and it wouldn’t surprise us if that spec was for Close Quarter Battle armor). If this unit’s first impression is anything to go by it really will be a remarkable unit, but only time and torture testing will tell that for sure.