Ever swapped out the hard drive in one of your Macs? Sure, the computer ends with with more storage space, but you end up with a silver box that doesn’t do you too much good. That is, unless you’re willing to put the drive inside of another housing and connect it to your computer again. The easiest way to do this is a dock such as Newer Technology’s Voyager Q ($80). Compatible with both 2.5” and 3.5” SATA drives, Voyager Q allows you to pop in your old drives and access the contents instantly.
Newer Tech explains it succinctly: it’s like a flash drive, but with huge capacity. And an obviously bigger footprint.
The Q in Voyager Q stands for quad. There are four interface options, including FireWire 800, 400, USB 3.0—backwards compatible to the 2.0 on your Mac—or eSATA.
Not surprisingly given the price, there’s no Thunderbolt port. If you’re looking to save a few bucks, Voyager S3 is also available, a design that only supports USB 2.0/3.0 but is less than half the price of Q, and a good option if you just need to occasionally drop a hard disk in for wiping or loading with data before moving it someplace else. You can also buy either dock along with a drive, ranging from 1TB to 3TB, at a premium. If you’re in the market for something like this, you probably already have the drive to fill it.
