OWC announces USB 3.1 Gen 1 hot swap Drive Dock

by Mark Tyson on 19 September 2016, 12:01

Tags: OWC

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OWC has launched a new Drive Dock. This device is, at its essence, a compact dock which facilitates the hot swapping of bare SATA drives (either 2.5 or 3.5-inch), and connects to your PC or Mac via a USB 3.1 Gen 1 interface for speedy performance. OWC calls it "the ultimate, high-performance bare drive access tool," and reckons it will be most useful for A/V creative professional workflows and backup purposes.

The new Drive Dock offers speedy performance of up to 434MB/s reads, and 406MB/s writes. It should support any SATA drive on the market including new drives over 10TB in capacity. Conveniently, both of its hot-swappable drive slots support either 2.5 or 3.5-inch bare drives. Each bay has an independent power switch and LED activity light. Enhancing the device's portability, around countries with varying electrical standards, the built-in PSU is of the universal auto-switching type.

OWC is better known in Mac hardware circles and has styled its Drive Dock accordingly; from brushed aluminium, with a glossy black plastic top. However, as mentioned previously, it is compatible with both Mac and PCs.

The OWC Drive Dock with USB 3.1 Gen 1 connectivity is now available at MacSales.com and authorized OWC resellers for an MSRP of $89.95.

For those with the need for even greater flexibility and speed OWC released a Drive Dock with Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3.1 Gen 1 in November last year. You can buy this model now for $247.99. It offers two Thunderbolt 2 ports and one USB 3.1 Gen 1 port and transfer speeds of up to 522MB/s, supporting multiple streams of compressed 4K, 2K, and HD video.



HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

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Ermmm, StarTech has had one out for almost a year now.
And being OWC will probably cost a fortune, albeit being well made.
“USB 3.1 gen 1”

So USB 3.0 then?
gagaga
“USB 3.1 gen 1”

So USB 3.0 then?

Yep. I don't know if they had a product like this in their lineup before - if they did, whatever's changed here is probably 90% cosmetic.


From skimming the article first, I thought it had USB-C for some reason. Until I saw the back of the thing, and thought “wait … what?” This is a product that's been on the market in nearly identical versions for years already. Outside of an aluminium casing, what's new? Why is this newsworthy? If it had USB-C, could draw 12V from that to power 3,5" drives, and could use external power and a C-A cable for legacy PCs, that would be something. This is just boring.