StarTech.com Dual-Bay USB 3.0 To SATA Hard Drive Docking Station, USB Hard Drive Dock, External 2.5/3.5" SATA I/II/III, SSD/HDD Docking Station, Hot-Swap Hard Drive Bay, Top-Loading (SDOCK2U33),Black

A review of the Startech four-bay USB docking station, SDOCK4U33. A fine four-bay docking station (dock), but with an inadequate power supply that prevents full use with the heaviest hard drives.To my knowledge the Seagate 8TB archieve drives are lowest cost but also the heaviest currently available  Seagate Archive HDD 8TB SATA 6GBps 128MB Cache SATA Hard Drive (ST8000AS0002) . Currently these Seagate drives are the most cost effective way to store huge amounts of data such as video files. Four of these in the four-bay dock will give a nominal 32TB. But I can only use three of these in the Startech four bay dock at the same time because four of the Seagate 8TB drives require 8 amps (2 amps each) to spin up and the Startech power supply yields only 6.5 amps. When I try to use four Seagates at the same time, they drives fight with each other for juice and will not start up properly.Had Startech used a more common single pin connector, It would be easy to find an 8 amp single pin power supply. However Startech uses a four-pin connector with uncommon voltage assignments.The common way of describing pin voltages is based on numbering with the connector flat on the top and then right-to-left and top-to-bottom.. So pins 1 and 2 are on the top and 3 and 4 on the bottom. The Startech 6.5 amp connector has pin voltages 1+, 2-, 3+, 4-. I could not find any 12 volt supplies with these pin voltages.It seems most four-pin, 12 volt power supplies have the two +12 volt pins on the side with the flat edge of the connector and minus (sometimes labeled ground) opposite to the flat side. These common four-pin voltages are 1+, 2+, 3-, 4-, going right to left and top to bottom from the flat side.How to run four heavy drives? Could get a single pin 8 amp power supply and cut and splice the cable so I keep the original Startech connector. This is the cheapest approach but now I have customized two power supplies not good for anything else.It turns out that with a "normal" four-pin 12 volt power supply, I can just rotate the connector 90 degrees and plug it into the dock. Looking from the back of the dock, the rotation is counterclockwise such that the flat side is on the right side of the back of the dock.I bought this 12 volt 12. 5 amp supply: KFD 150W Power Supply from Amazon  KFD 150W Power Supply 12V 12.5A For FSP150-AHA ECS Buddie UB 4m23 BUDDIE ECS D1S4-2 4Pin . Although more amps than I need I bought this one because the Amazon description clearly states the pins voltages as 1+, 2+, 3-, 4- and the expanded picture confirms the pin assignments.I rotated the KFD connector 90 degrees as described above and it fit nicely and stayed put. I used White Out to mark the connector and the body of the dock, so I don't get mixed up about alignment.Having excess amperage capability does not pose a hazard. The hard drives will take only the amps they need--a maximum of eight amps for a couple of seconds at start up but then about three amps normally (from the Seagate specs). Ordinary internal wiring should easily handle this amperage and apparently does.I have two of these docks each running four of the 8TB Seagates (for a total of eight). After six months of hard: use problems.

Since I always need more drive systems available I researched long & hard to find a perfect USB 3.0 external removable system for my library of hard drives.I bought this a while back and now (Aug 2018) I finally decided to do a review of it as I am pleased that it has lasted me this long.It works perfectly with every SATA harddrives though you need to be careful with the Toshiba drives as they have a bit of trouble getting out of it.I am getting good speeds copying data back & forth from it and I average between 50MB-60MB/sec with the 7200 RPM drives. Of course if you are using slower drives you will experience slower speeds.Every now and again I get the bit of vibrations noises from the drives & the unit, but this is easily remedied with a small cloth (or a 15"x15" microfiber towel) on top of the drives and put 2 hard drives on top of the cloth. Very simple noise dampener.Additionally I have this plugged into a separate 4 port USB 3.0 PCI card in the computer so as to not overwhelm the USB bus on the system and that works very well.The 4 blue LED lights are bright so you may want to put something over them if the bright lights are too much for you at night.Lastly, I strongly advise you to get a small fan to be blowing directly over the unit esp if you have all 4 bays filled up. For the 4 7200rpm drives I have in it, I see that the temps can run to 47C and higher very easily. With the fan blowing over it, the drives temps are ranging from 28-34C.----------------------------------------------------------------------Update Sept 9 2020 - as I've been using this these 3 yrs now I've only been accessing 2 or 3 of the drive bays and I thought that 1 of my hard drives had died, an older Seagate 2Tb. However I just bought 2 HGST 8TB drives and tried initializing them and I confirmed that its the rear left drive bay is now dead! I swapped around the drives while having Crystaldiskinfo, Drive Manager and Windows File Manager open as the drives are removed and re-inserted; So it lasted about 3 yrs and I just need to figure out how to work with 3 of the 4 drives. I'm now in the process of initializing and doing my Acceptance Tests for these hard drives that I just bought. They are HGST 8Tb drives I got off Ebay and they are pulled out of old servers that has something like 22,000 hrs on it (3+ yrs). Crystaldiskinfo is only showing 11 Power Ups cycles on them so that confirms that they were used in Dell Servers and I got a decent $$ on them.

After five years of heavy use I decided to do a write up on this. This is a four-bay USB 3.0 docking station which at any given time I have three SATA drives docked in it. I rarely have it disconnected but I do have it connected to a USB 3.0 hub and sharing other devices on that hub. I typically get between 100-150 MBs transfers from it and I use it primarily to store videos and photos which I create as well as storing data for numerical analysis.Unlike some other reviews, I am not hearing a lot of fan noise. You should be familiar with initializing hard drives on your system before using this device under windows. I have used it under windows 7 & 10 without issue. I have powered it down via its front four harddrive buttons and had my workstations power interrupted while it has been active and I have not seen any issues other than restarting a copy process with the individual hard drives. I am not saying to do a power down during processing, it is never recommended, but it does not appear to have any more issues than having an internal hard drive to lose power.I have used a combination of Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital drives of various sizes 1Tb, 2Tb, and 4Tb. I have heard from others that it does well with larger drives but have not tried them out yet.Having used it for five years I have noticed that dust can get inside an open socket, be sure to use compressed air to blow it off of the connections in dusty environments.

Other docking stations do have "1 touch" cloning, and as it had cloning in the title I had assumed it had some built in functionality for cloning but it actually doesn't - slightly misleading as it simply is a dock, and then within windows you can do what you want with those drives - including cloning but it will require additional software whereas I was hoping to do this offline with a one touch as I have another 1 to 1 dock from the same manufacturer which does.Also speeds are slower than a HDD plugged in via a usb 3.0 single adaptor which is also a let down after they mention built in technology to improve 3.0 data transfer speeds.HOWEVER - if all you want is a 4 drive dock, you're fine it is what it is. However I feel they upsold this a little too much and as a consequence is far more expensive than it should be.

I am very happy with this HDD docking station it works very good and fast but the sell could have paged it a lot better it was a box in a box and the main box just moved around inside the other box and the only padding was one piece of brown paper and it was small but very good item

USB2 plugged into computer for 3no 3Tb 3 1/2" hard drives for CCTV, has been doing the job some year/monthsr. used to utilise and read old PC hard drives, bought the 2 1/2" hard drive caddy.

Brilliant device - i use it to add 16TB to an iMac using inexpensive disks.

Works with mac.Fast and easy.