Ask Mr. Tech

I just bought this neat little gizmo that could come in handy if you ever want to pull data off a hard drive that’s not sitting in any type of enclosure. It allows you to plug either a regular sized (3.5") or notebook sized (2.5") hard drive and connect it to your computer: it has both USB 2.0 and eSATA ports. This will work with Windows or Mac OS.

This is useful if you have any old hard drives lying around, or if you have a hard drive that won’t boot and you just want to see if you can get any data off of it from another machine. It can be used for data transfer, backup, or imaging (cloning).

Connectivity is easy since any computer will have a USB port, but if you have an eSATA card you will get much faster transfer speeds.

Ordering to the US cost me an extra $25 in shipping for a total of $79.00, but I think it’s worth it considering it can be very handy in a number of situations.

Click Here to Order the 2.5" and 3.5" SATA HDD Dock (USB + ESATA)

If you really don’t need the eSATA port, they have another version with extra USB ports to also act as a 4-port USB hub.

Terms like “data storage”, “backup”, and “disaster recovery planning” used to be primarily associated with pocket-protector-wearing nerds who inhabit the cubicles and refrigerator-like datacenters of Information Technology departments in large corporations. (I’m allowed to cast such libelous aspersions since I myself transitioned from an exceedingly Kafkaesque, corporate IT background into the world of digital photography.)

But now that photography has largely gone digital, photographers are finding themselves in the position of having to make decisions on how to store, organize, and secure the lifeblood of their business — digital images – whether in RAW format, as JPEGs, TIFFs, or retouched Photoshop files.

While many different computer programs exist that can organize, manipulate, and retrieve digital images (applications like iPhoto, Adobe Lightroom, Aperture, and iView Media Pro, to name a few), the focus of this article is the physical media used to store and back up this data, regardless of what applications are used. (more…)