Access up to 4 SATA drives simultaneously over a single USB 2.0/3.0 or eSATA connection
Dual, variable speed fans allows you to adjust the amount of cooling for any kind of environment or drives
Independent power buttons and eject mechanism for each SATA hard drive allows for quick and easy hot-swapping
Accepts up to 4 SATA hard drives simultaneously, in a single docking station
Dual 60mm cooling fans mounted below the drives with variable speed controls (including OFF)
Backward compatible with USB 2.0 systems, out of the box
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 compliant host interface with support for transfer rates up to 5 Gbps
Supports both 2.5" and 3.5" form factor hard drives (HDD) and solid state drives (SSD)
This review is from: StarTech.com SATDOCK4U3E 4 Bay eSATA USB 3.0 to SATA Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5/3.5 HDDI saw several complaints about this device before I purchased it, but I decided to go for it anyway. It turned out to be a very good choice. I was continually swapping multiple 500GB to 2TB hard drives in a single dock. This device lets me to put my 4 most frequently used drives into a single unit allowing immediate access to the data therein. I didn't believe the problems reported by others that it requires restarting of all drives (or the computer) after swapping a single drive in the unit and I have not encountered any problems whatsoever when swapping drives in this docking station. As long as you remember to offline the drive before powering it down & replacing it, it works exactly as it should. But then again, I am also using a StarTech dual-port eSATA controller that I bought with this unit as well, so that may be making a difference, too. Since I still need to swap drives and my second eSATA port is only hosting a single-bay toaster, I will probably be getting another one of these to allow still fewer swaps....
This review is from: StarTech.com SATDOCK4U3E 4 Bay eSATA USB 3.0 to SATA Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5/3.5 HDDThe specification are perfectly accurate. The two internal fans on mine rattled badly to the point it was too loud and annoying to leave it running full-time. The manual says it discounts with dismounting and mounting drives. I did not experience any of that on either the eSATA or the USB 3.0....
This review is from: StarTech.com SATDOCK4U3E 4 Bay eSATA USB 3.0 to SATA Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5/3.5 HDDUpdated 4/21/2011 -1 star: These things have major problems and need to go back into the oven for a few months to get them sorted out. Getting these things to connect requires turning off one of the four drives, waiting a few seconds then turning it back on. Anytime your computer is restarted or goes to sleep, you get to do it again.
Also, if you're trying to move something to another drive and also want to do something else while the move operation is taking place, the second command will freeze. To put this in practical terms, you can't listen to an mp3 and move a file at the same time without the mp3 skipping. Given how fast this interface is, i can not comprehend how this happens.
Updated 3/14/2011 -2 stars: Well the honeymoon has started to wear off a little. Here's the deal: The firmware is clearly immature. The drives don't seem to be able to operate independently of each other within the bay. For instance, if you turn any one of the four drives off, then the entire array resets and all the drives disconnect and reconnect with windows instead of just one.
The disconnect/reconnect process wouldn't be so bad except that the drives don't reconnect well at all, and instead keep trying to connect over and over and each time they do, you can hear the clicking as the drives start/stop, start/stop. Sometimes the drives will never reconnect and you'll have to turn them each off and back on manually, in order to restart the connect process--which will hopefully work this time.
This kind of start/stop stress is disastrous for hard drives as the continuous on and off process will shorten the drives life considerably. I can't think of a worse flaw for a drive bay to have.
Finally, if you happen to restart windows or turn off your computer on a regular basis, do not get one of these because doing so just starts the continuous on/off process again which may continue indefinitely until you intervene (at which point the mechanical parts of the drive might already be dead from over stress.)
Recommendation: Until they improve the firmware and fix the windows connectivity issues, i'd stay away.
Original review continues below.
Pros:
Extremely fast transfer speeds.
Holds four drives and only uses one usb 3.0 connection.
Cons:
The fans don't seem to do much, if anything. I can't even tell if they're on or not.
The drives won't seem to turn off so they are always running and always hot regardless of your windows power settings. I'm assuming this is a USB 3.0 thing and not the drive bay itself, so hopefully this will be fixed with a windows update.
I have 8 external 7200rpm hard drives all using USB 2.0 and the transfer speeds when moving files from one drive to another averaged a meager 15 - 30MBs. After plugging four of them into this USB docking bay, the transfer speeds increased to 45 - 85MBs (using usb 3.0). (Note these are video files i'm talking about here)
After five minutes of playing around with this thing, and seeing the massive increase in transfer speed, i got on amazon and ordered another one overnight delivery for my other four drives.
Cannot recommend this enough if you have some vacant USB 3.0 ports. USB 3.0 is the next level. Once you use it, you'll never want to go back....
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