StarTech.com USB 3.0 Dual SATA Hard Drive Docking Station with Fast Charge Hub UASP and Fan - HDD SSD Dock for 2.5 / 3.5" Drives - White

I've used quite a few USB docking stations and this is my favorite model yet. I really like the fact that it has a fan to keep the drives cool if I'm going to be running them for an extended period of time. Other nice little extras:1) It has a switch to set the sleep behavior of the drives - you can set it to spin down the disks when not is use for a period of time or you can turn this feature off. If I know that I'll be accessing the drives on and off over the course of an evening, I'll turn this feature off so that I don't have to repeatedly wait for the drives to spin back up. However, if I'm going to leave drives in the dock but I'm not planning on using them for an extended period of time, I'll turn this back on so that the drives can spin down.2) I also really like that there is a USB 3 port right up front. There's even a switch to set this port to a charging only port or to allow you to use is as a data port.3) UASP support: If your USB ports support UASP, this can make a noticeable difference in performance. This dock will work even if your computer does not have UASP support, but it's nice to have the support for this in the dock. (If you are not familiar with UASP, just do a quick web search - there are a lot of good articles detailing this).I have a couple very minor quibbles but I didn't see these as enough to take off a star:1) The USB port on the front is "upside down". What I mean by this is that if you plug in a device such as a thumb drive that device will be upside down preventing you from being able to see the status / activity light on the device. Often this may not be at all important, if it is, you can work around that with a short 6 inch or so USB extension cable.2) There is a fan speed control dial on the back. From the off position, as you turn it, it will click on and then the further you turn it, the faster the fan speed will be. Just be aware that at the slowest speed, when power is applied it may be too slow a setting to allow the fan to start spinning. Once spinning you can crank it down to the lowest setting and the momentum will be enough to keep the fan going, but once the fan stops, it won't start again at this lowest setting. again, the workaround is easy - just make sure to never set the speed control all the way to the minimum.

I thought this dock was just what I was looking for to test new hard drives for my server. Two slots and a fan to keep them cool while they are being tested. Perfect right...Not really... One slot works flawlessly and the other is now producing SMART Interface CRC Errors to be recorded. It is not the drives as I can swap a single drive between the slots and one will work and one will create the errors and the hard drive testing program to freeze... Not good...Sigh... I guess I will be testing one drive at a time and then deal with returning/replacing this...

I bought this back in 2014 and not only does it work great it does more than StarTech.com says in that you can use higher capacity drives than they say will work in it. According to starTech the unit is good for up to 2 4TB drives but I have been using mine with 2 6TB drives with no problem whatsoever the drives I have tested in it are 2 WD Black 6 TB drives at the same time and also 1 WD Black 6TB and 1 Seagate Ironwolf pro 6TB ( at the same time) with no problems whatsoever.HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

So far so good! I needed to backup all my work, plus need a dock that can deliver data speeds as I do video editing and this meets my expectations and demands. USB 3.0 data transfer speed is very fast with the USAP protocol using 7200 rpm Hard-disks so I'm a happy camper. You can also adjust the fan speed as well or turn it off and also put the hard drives to sleep when not in use. Lastly, the front USB charging port is convenient for charging your smartphone/tablet or other USB device.

I bought this for my server cupboard.... but when there is a power cut , it is necessary to manually power on the device.This is most annoying and unlike any other external dock I have used in the past.Other than that, if you are using this as a desktop dock and can manually power on, this is a great dock. They should be clearer about this in the documentation (there is nothing that mentions this flaw).I might have to repurpose the one I have now.

This is being used to allow us to do offline disk archives. I am using it with a Mac. Having the two bays allows us to plug in two drives, setup a software RAID 1 and copy the files to both drives simultaneously. Once complete, we break the RAID and have two copies of our data to store geographically separate. Has worked great so far. Unfortunately the Mac I am using is USB 2.0 so don't have the ability to stress test the USB 3.0 performance.

This thing has all of the features that I was looking for in a dock:#1 - Individual power for each drive allowing separate safe insertion and removal of each drive.#2 - Physical eject buttons (for each drive).#3 - Idle sleep so drives aren't running when not being accessed.#4 - SMART/Bad sector reports in Linux.Bonus features:- USB 3.0 hub port for daisy chaining.- Additional port on the front useful for cell phone charging.Cons:Don't start both drives at the same time as this has high potential of causing an under power situation and the unit will turn off completely.Front port is upside down.

I use this with the new 8TB Seagate Enterprise HDDs and it works great. I wasn't thinking it would work with such a large drive because it says it was only tested with 4TBs HDDs but I am pleasantly surprised that I can use it with the 8TBs. It is quiet and relatively fast too. No problems at all.