question external hdd dock with dual slots and hotswap?

[SirMille]

is there any product out there like this?
if by any chance it would support both ide and sata that would be awesome.

 

[ddrueding]

I've never seen IDE ones, but I have several of these. Some here have had reliability problems with them, however.

 

[SirMille]

How is that? Like, are they breaking? Or messing up your data?

 

[LunarMist]

I have some similar ones from Thermaltake. They work just fine for USB, but you need a controller with PM capability to see both drives in eSATA mode.
There are no IDE toasters AFAIK, because the IDE spec does not support hot swapping. I've destroyed some drives that way.

 

[SirMille]

Thermaltake.. sound good. Gonna look it up! But what's PM compability?

 

[LunarMist]

PM=Port Multiplier. Even some cheap PCI/e cards or onboard controllers support PM, such as those based on the SIL3132, JMB36X, etc.

 

[ddrueding]

The one I have has a pair of eSATA ports on the back, one per drive. No PM required.

 

[LunarMist]

Oh, that one does have two separate ports.