Introduction

Thermaltake has just come up with the ultimate enthusiast accessory; at least that is what went through my head when I first saw the press release of the new BlacX and BlacX SE. As I read the release my mind started to drift away, thinking about the two foot tall stack of SATA drives sitting in my closet and how useful it would be to just grab a drive and start transferring data to it within seconds. Forget about the need to take off the side panel, get on the floor, find a flash light and locate one of two hundred SATA cables that are in the room (that you can never find when you need one). Just grab a drive and plug it in. If this scenario sounds familiar, than you are definitely a PC enthusiast and will want to read on to have a look at the new Thermaltake BlacX.

Thermaltake currently has three versions of the BlacX floating around, and two of them are nearly identical. Today we will be testing the BlacX with a part number of N0028USU. This drive features USB 2.0 only and looks nearly identical to the BlacX with a part number of ST0005U. The difference between the two models is the second version features USB 2.0 and eSATA. We will talk more about eSATA later in this article and what can be gained by using it. The third version from the BlacX line is physically different and is called the BlacX SE (part number N0029USU) and it uses USB 2.0 but adds a four-port USB 2.0 hub at the base of the unit as well.

Let's take a look at the Thermaltake BlacX and see what kind of performance we can get out of this convenience accessory.