Can you open the individual drives - so to upgrade the drive at a later time? I.e. can I put a 2TB drive in the case and then put case in the Dock?
487290
Yes, you open individual drives. Another words, they come up on the desk top separately. I'm not sure what you mean by your next question. But I if it's what I think you mean, yes.
487291
No. You can not. This is a Dock for G-Tech's ev drive series. So you can take their portable EV drives and dock them to your computer without having to plug them in individually. You can not open a G-Tech drive and replace the internal drive. You can however buy other G-Drive ev drives and use those. You can also take the drives out of the dock and use them as standard external drives with a cable going to each drive. This is not a NAS dock or 3.5 inch dock. Let me reiterate- this is a dock to be used with G-Tech's ev series of drives.
487292
There do appear to be any visible fasteners on the drive modules. Probably assembled with some of the new adhesive tapes, etc.
327896
Nope, add what you want. Don't know about inserting already used (data on board) drives. I've always placed 'new' / clean drives in. There isn't a requirement to fill all slots. I have (3) 1TB drives in my 5N.
473624
It has no storage of its own. It is an enclosure into which you can put a hard drive. I put a 3tb drive into mine, but am planning to take it out, since the enclosure is too slow. I think I'm only getting USB 1.0 speeds out of it, not USB 2.0. So a 3tb drive would be better used elsewhere. I'm going to put an older smaller drive in & use it for different purposes (ie, not main storage, but special-case backups).
824753
Max supported size? Dimensionally, it fits every modern 3.5 inch drive I've tried. Gig/Terabyte wise, it doesn't care, the Serial ATA (SATA) data connectors pass through. If your drive will work without this dock, it should work with the dock.It's sort of like asking how fast a car can your garage handle. The garage doesn't care about speed, just if it will fit through the door.
760797
You can but, I don't know if you'll see improved I/O. I'm not sure what the SATA interface is to the drive. If it's an older generation you may not see improved throughput. Chances are you will see improved I/O. Just not sure how much.
822814
What i first got for the docking station was a Western Digital Green 2TB 3.5" HD & partitioned it in half - one side to use as a backup for my MacBook Pro & the other side as storage for music, movies & the like...works fine. Seagate also makes good HD's... you'll just have to shop around to find something suitable...1TB drives can be found 2nd hand for a very good price - just need to check it out first... got my 2TB for $50 from someone that moved up to a 4TB drive & just didn't need the other any more. Had brought the dock w/ me to check it out. May you find what you need... Raimon What i first got for the docking station was a Western Digital Green 2TB 3.5" HD & partitioned it in half - one side to use as a backup for my MacBook Pro & the other side as storage for music, movies & the like...works fine. Seagate also makes good HD's... you'll just have to shop around to find something suitable...1TB drives can be found 2nd hand for a very good price - just need to check it out first... got my 2TB for $50 from someone that moved up to a 4TB drive & just didn't need the other any more. Had brought the dock w/ me to check it out. May you find what you... » Read More What i first got for the docking station was a Western Digital Green 2TB 3.5" HD & partitioned it in half - one side to use as a backup for my MacBook Pro & the other side as storage for music, movies & the like...works fine. Seagate also makes good HD's... you'll just have to shop around to find something suitable...1TB drives can be found 2nd hand for a very good price - just need to check it out first... got my 2TB for $50 from someone that moved up to a 4TB drive & just didn't need the other any more. Had brought the dock w/ me to check it out. May you find what you need... Raimon « Show Less
212326
I will agree with the other two comments.. Just upgrade the drive to a larger size. Storage is pretty cheap these days. Good Luck!
2233171
Kinda prefer hard drive docking stations actually. Especially ones straight up and down. Easier on the motor. One I'm using is Vantec e-sata in white. Think it only goes to 3TB so when I go to 4 TB I gotta look for a new one. I mostly prefer it because I can stick a 3-4 inch mini fan behind it if it gets too warm. And cases don't do much for heat dissipation even the ones that are supposed to. Only one that did they don't make anymore :(
980278
I put in my HDs so long ago, all three of them in three docks, I must have formatted in the docks since they never were in my PC. They are all NTFS now and they didn't come that way.
1812321
There is space for only 2 HDD's in this unit. If both slots are used, then you would need to add larger drives. If you have (2) 1TB drives mirrored and needed more space, you could remove one 1TB drive, add a 4TB drive, rebuild the mirror, then removed the second 1TB drive and add a second 4TB drive then rebuild. This would keep the data online while you upgrade. After the HDD swapping and rebuilding, the new 6TB of space (3TB from each disk) could be made into another volume (mirrored or striped). Adding drive by the USB port is good for backing up your data to an external device, but I haven't tried to use a USB attached device to share data as it it's part of the NAS unit.
611278
A.J., Thanks for your post, I have just done the same thing and it works a treat. My Mac picked up the Seagate drive on the desktop with no bother. Seems like the case and heat issues are letting Seagate down here.F
1370504
Nope you can use them all (I assume) at once. I've only used 4 out of the 5 at once, excluding the HDD dock. Oh and to correct my previous comment I opened up the case and checked to make sure and the HDD Dock and the USB ports connect through a different SATA ports. So the case will take up two SATA ports on your motherboard. Sorry for the confusion.
2012155
This item is for converting a 2.5" drive into a 3.5" bay for use in a desktop computer internally. If you wanted to use this as an external drive as you asked, you technically could do this if you also bought an extra, external drive enclosure for a 3.5" drive. I have to ask though, why do that when you can just buy an external drive enclosure for a 2.5" drive instead of this Icy Dock + a 3.5 " drive bay and essentially double-converting it?
1123646
get the Vantec 2.5 SATA kit which comes with a case. The kit is onlly 7 or 8 dollars. You can use the SATA connector to clone your original drive and house it afterwards.
1872238
Thanks for your information. I did also find out that there's a sata port intended for an optical drive. If so, then I can mount the SSD in that bay and still have all 4 bays for data. Now - does anybody know if the BIOS can handle 3TB drives without repartitioning?
1085
yes you can upgrade the hdd but im not sure on the size and also not sure on the ssd hdd. hope this helps.
1510475
Theoretically, you can since the dock mode presents the two HDDs in JBOD layout from my understanding but I've only used it to clone HDDs. Please confirm with StarTech instead, I'm just one of the many customers.