Seagate Dock

[Emerenciana Mcgreal]

Most laptops come with just 500GB to 1TB internal storage and many nowadays feature a mix of just 2-3 Thunderbolt 3 and USB ports. Plus, they often lack an external display port, let alone an RJ-45 for a wired connection. For creative professionals, this limited connectivity can hinder a workflow, severely.

Cooling the unit is a small fan that is silent under most operation. Seagate outfit this dock with a fast 4TB 7,200-RPM Seagate IronWolf NAS HDD (ST4000NE001). It operates over a SATA 6 Gbps interface and features a 128MB DRAM cache. It offers quite some performance for an HDD.

Powering the Type-C port are an Intel Titan Ridge JHL7440 Thunderbolt 3 controller and ARM Cortex-M0 based Cypress Semiconductor EZ-PD CCG5 Type-C and power delivery controller, part number CYPD5235-96BZXI. Capable of up to 40 GBps in bandwidth, or about 2.8 GBps of bandwidth for storage devices, this Thunderbolt 3 interface allows for some high-speed performance and flexibility. When connected to the host, the front notification light on the dock will light blue when connected to a Thunderbolt 3 port.

In my search for unconventional Thunderbolt 3 eGPU solutions, I found some intriguing options. The first one in my list was the WD_Black D50 Game Dock [discussion link & build guide]. Another fun choice was the Seagate FireCuda Gaming Dock. These two Thunderbolt 3 docks share many similarities, but the part I like the most is a full x4 PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2 slot and Intel JHL7440 Thunderbolt 3 controller. They allow us to build Thunderbolt 3 eGPU through a M.2 adapter such as ADT-Link R43SG to reach a max throughput of 3,000 MB/s.

Unlike the WD_Black D50 Game Dock, the FireCuda Gaming Dock does not have upstream Power Delivery (only 15W) to charge laptops. It's also a lot more bulkier than the D50 Game Dock. This was due to a larger footprint to accommodate a 4TB 3.5" SATA hard drive. To extend that footprint even longer, Seagate had the NVMe M.2 slot protruding to the front of the enclosure which then shielded by a metal cover with LED boards and connection pins for RGB. This piece is a nice feature for adding a M.2 SSD as well as M.2 eGPU adapter.

I quickly learned the dock does not turn on unless the metal cover is installed. The power-on circuit is open without the LED boards being connected. Not wanting to break anything, I decided to use my trusty putty knife to take this RGB metal cover apart. There's no screw holding the 3x main components together. The gap is very minimal so it takes patience and a very thin putty knife to pry this thing apart. I bought this tool more than 15 years ago to open the first generation Mac mini G4.

Once the LED frame is separate from the inner frame, I could close the power-on circuit to use this FireCuda Gaming Dock. It's not a perfect opening to install the ADT-Link R43SG M.2 adapter. The flex cable sits at angle, but that's not an issue with the eGPU connection so far. I connected this arrangement to my 2018 Mac mini. This computer already has an RX 580 eGPU (Gigabyte Gaming Box) powering an LG 4K monitor and an HP 5K monitor (three DisplayPort cables). The ASUS 15 FHD portable monitor is through a USB-C cable from the back of Mac mini.

The Radeon Frontier Edition was plug-and-play in macOS through this arrangement. Here are some screen captures of System Information and CL!ng in macOS. Sleep and wake from sleep work well in the past three days of testing. I will try Windows 11 in Boot Camp next.

The FireCuda Gaming Dock gives the Radeon FE a clear advantage over the RX 580 in the Gigabyte Gaming Box. Although there's no PD, it pairs nicely with a Mac desktop like the 2018 Mac mini. You'd get a 4TB drive for external storage, 5x USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, 1x downstream Thunderbolt 3 port, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x RJ45 ethernet network port, 1x 3.5mm audio-in/mic port, and 1x 3.5mm audio-out port. The only missing I/O is an SD slot.

When you do the Windows 11 testing, could you do some benchmarks comparing the real-world gains from this vs direct TB3 eGPU? Would be insteresting to see how the bandwidth translates to performance.

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The Seagate Free Agent GoFlex Docks were an excellent product, allowing interchange of hard disk drives and connectivity protocols. They made USB 3, FireWire, and even NAS docks for these hard disk drives. But the connector is standard SATA and could be used with any drive. So I created a 3D printable adapter and released it on Thingiverse!

I would not hesitate to recommend the Unicomp Spacesaver M to Macintosh users used to an original IBM Model M, and I am admittedly a tough customer. I wish that Unicomp would update their website, packaging, logo, and keyboard graphics, but none of this really matters as your fingers press the keys. If any keyboard is worth $100, it is the Unicomp Spacesaver M!

On reading my thoughts about the evolution of enterprise storage, many pointed out that this looks an awful lot like the Facebook-led Open Compute Project (OCP). This is entirely intentional. But OCP is simply one expression of this new architecture, and perhaps not the best one for the enterprise.

My issue is that neither of the Western Digital drives will show up when in the dock. Both the Samsung and Seagate work show up and I have used them both to transfer data. I have tried multiple times to get them to show up and made sure they were seated correctly.

The only idea that I can gather, and it was just a "faint" random forum post (and I don't think this makes sense, but I can't convince myself either way) is that the Western Digitals think that they are "Master" drives and will not respond to puny slave requests to allow them to be read or written to.

I am not sure what the next steps should be now. I guess I could go buy another dock/USB-SATA device and try again or maybe the device is not the issue? I talked with the microcenter rep for a while and he said that he has used this specific Nexstar to hook up many types of drives (for what that's worth). So I might assume it is an issue with Western Digital or my current hardware setup..?

EDIT3: 1TB WD: I first plugged in the new 1TB WD drive and opened up the disk management tool. Upon opening the tool it told me that the disk space was unrecognized and needed to be formatted (I don't think that is the right term) to MBR or GPT, I chose GPT.

After I selected GPT the drive still showed as unallocated. I then chose to format it to NTFS and did not select a drive letter. It still did not show up in explorer. I then chose to "change drive letter and paths". Once I assigned it a drive letter it showed up in explorer.

3TB WD: When I plugged in the 3TB WD I opened the disk management utility to find that it has 3 partitions (I am not sure what they are of). I then deleted each partition and formatted the entire drive, giving it a drive letter also. Once this was done it showed up in windows explorer. I undocked and redocked it, it then showed up as if I plugged in a USB device. So I have to assume it is also all good.

In the first case, Windows has correctly identified the disk.In the second case, a proprietary driver needs to be installed fromeither a CD supplied with the disk or downloaded from the manufacturer's website.

Windows is pretty particular about the way the disk should be formatted.If an external disk is partitioned into multiple partitions, it risksto be unrecognized, or worse, only the first partition is recognized.A new disk should always be examined for such problems before being used.

Once the entire disk is one unallocated space, right-clickand choose New Simple Volume, then follow the wizard.Be careful to format all disks larger than 2 TB as GPT, since the other option,MBR, will not use more than the first 2.2 TB of the disk.

Imagine, for example, if a drive with two partitions showed up in Windows Explorer and you double-clicked on it, which partition would it open? If you dragged a file to it, which partition would it go to?

Pulling out my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desktop External Hard Drive (2TB version) today, I found that it has a detachable dock on accident (it was loose). That got me interested in taking the drive apart. In this article, I will show you the process and the hardware inside the enclosure.

The hard drive enclosure only has two ports on the dock: 1) the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port and the AC power port. As shown in the photo below, the AC port is 12 volts with a positive center. The SuperSpeed port is labeled with the SS logo. Although it's USB 3.0, it is still backward compatible with the older USB ports. The drive has a single while LED in the front of the dock.

There are no screws anywhere on the case. They are not under any rubber feet, nor are they under the label. Instead, the case is snapped together with locking tabs. It's obvious that the manufacturer didn't intend you to open it.

Use a small flat-head screwdriver to pry between the seams on the drive. I decide to start on the vents on the back of the drive (see photo below). Because they are locking tabs, you will break off several, if not all, of the tabs to open the case.

Seagate describes its spec as: "Barracuda Green desktop hard drives feature capacities up to 2TB and a unique 5900-RPM spin speed to deliver the highest performance available in a green drive. Up to 20% faster than other eco-friendly internal hard drives. Up to 44% less power consumption than standard desktop drives. Optimized performance with available 64MB cache and SATA 6Gb/s interface. SmartAlign technology for easy migration to the new Advanced Format 4K sector standard."

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