Hot take: I stopped putting customer drives in my bench rig and bought a $35 dock instead

Michael Chen · 2026-09-30T05:05:03.215162+00:00

Last month a walk-in came in with a laptop that would not boot, and I had a choice between pulling the drive and slaving it into my main bench machine or using a cheap USB dock I had just picked up. I went with the dock on a hunch, and it turned out the drive was full of bad sectors that would have locked up my whole rig mid clone. My old boss always said direct SATA into the bench was faster, and he is not wrong about speed, but I lost a power supply that way back in 2021. So which side are you on, dock or direct, and has a dead drive ever taken out your bench setup?

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Hot take: I stopped putting customer drives in my bench rig and bought a $35 dock instead | Computer Technicians - Talk Freely