New 2.5" Thunderbolt dock - Blackmagic MultiDock

[treestar]

http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicmultidock

It was announced at the beginning of the year, released last month, and no one is reviewing it.

Quick specs:

4 x 2.5" SATA II 3Gb/s
1 x Thunderbolt 1 interface
1 x AC power
Software RAID only
$565.25

Official response:

The SATA port is the 3Gb/s which is rev2. The bottleneck is with the Thunderbolt 1 interface link which will be saturated. This is also why there is no significant benefit from running more than a pair of SSD's in RAID 0.

Why? It looks like the best 2.5" Thunderbolt dock available but why would they use SATA II controllers instead of SATA III? Other Thunderbolt peripherals like the LaCie 5big can go over 1000 MB/s. I would have liked to RAID 0 two SATA III SSDs to get at least over 800 MB/s but Blackmagic seems to say this isn't possible. Does anyone have experience with it yet, benchmarks, comments?

 

[Alexis1537]

http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicmultidock

It was announced at the beginning of the year, released last month, and no one is reviewing it.

I agree, this is weird. I've been tracking this product for a while and when it comes to reviews (even reviews on Amazon where the thing's on sale and in stock), zero/nada/zip.

Is there a Bermuda Triangle thing going on with this product where any review mysteriously disappears?

 

[MCAsan]

Very late to into a TB1 interface. It should be TB2 that is backwards compatible with TB1. This is almost too little too late.

 

[g4cube]

Only a single Thunderbolt port.

 

[treestar]

I agree, this is weird. I've been tracking this product for a while and when it comes to reviews (even reviews on Amazon where the thing's on sale and in stock), zero/nada/zip.

Is there a Bermuda Triangle thing going on with this product where any review mysteriously disappears?

I was considering ordering it today but after finally after getting some replies on this thread and finding I am not alone, my confidence is again shaken. There are still no reviews on B&H or Amazon, but Gearslutz users are posting a few details about it.

Very late to into a TB1 interface. It should be TB2 that is backwards compatible with TB1. This is almost too little too late.

I did learn about one more ideal design feature that wasn't getting mention previously; it's fanless. I still find myself trying to justify the products shortcomings though, namely the SATA 2 controllers, single Thunderbolt port and the now surpassed Thunderbolt Rev 1 controller. With all the other bottlenecks of the MultiDock it probably doesn't even matter at this point.

I could potentially deal with the inability to daisy chain because the Retina MacBook Pros and Mac Pro are going to have at least 2 Thunderbolt ports. As I said, I'm finding myself working to excuse it's downfalls. It seems like a clean product but it's sizable investment that has no future at this point. Will the controllers be enough a year from now? Will someone else come along in six months and have something up to date that I should wait for? It took so long for the MultiDock to come out. No other designers are promising a dock like this.

 

[fredr500]

I could potentially deal with the inability to daisy chain because the Retina MacBook Pros and Mac Pro are going to have at least 2 Thunderbolt ports.

One thing to remember on the rMBP is that while it comes with 2 TB ports, it does not have a wired ethernet port, but a TB (or mini display port) to Ethernet adapter exists, and if you need VGA or DVI to an external monitor that takes up a TB port.

I'm not sure if this dock has a LAN port, but if not the lack of daisy chain would be a deal breaker for me.

I've been using a Belkin TB dock, it has LAN, audio, USB, FW3 and a TB daisy chain. I'm happy with it but would probably go with a newer dock if buying today.

 

[treestar]

One thing to remember on the rMBP is that while it comes with 2 TB ports, it does not have a wired ethernet port, but a TB (or mini display port) to Ethernet adapter exists, and if you need VGA or DVI to an external monitor that takes up a TB port.

I'm not sure if this dock has a LAN port, but if not the lack of daisy chain would be a deal breaker for me.

I've been using a Belkin TB dock, it has LAN, audio, USB, FW3 and a TB daisy chain. I'm happy with it but would probably go with a newer dock if buying today.

It's not a full featured dock. It's a disk dock. 4 SATA slots. That's all. It's designed for the video industry to use raw data from SSD's. I'm trying to use it for scratch disks and some project data.

 

[treestar]

They have just updated to version 2 with 2 x Thunderbolt 2 ports and 4 x SATA III 6 Gbps controllers. Same price

 

[williamh]

I'm definitely ordering one!!