SABRENT USB 3.0 to SATA I/II/III Dual Bay External Hard Drive Docking Station

I picked up this docking station after helping my father set up his new all-in-one PC and I found a bunch of older computers and hard drives laying around his house. I brought all of the drives home with me so that I can go through all of them and make sure I save all of the pictures he’s taken over the years! This docking station was perfect since it can handle both 3.5” and 2.5” drives. It was pretty much plug and play when I first connected it to my computer. I have no issues with the processing speed, knowing some of the older drives aren’t going to be as powerful as newer SSD drives. It’s been very reliable and I haven’t had any issues accessing all of the drives I’ve attached so far. This became really handy when my Father-inLaw’s PC recently died (and he didn’t have a backup of his files). I pulled his Hard Drive out of his old tower and plugged it into the docking station, then downloaded all of his files on a 32gb thumb drive (older generation and not a lot of files!!) and took it back down to his house on our next visit. He was really happy to get all of his files back and I got to keep his 2 TB drive as a spare so I can use as my external backup drive to do monthly backups (I’m also using the Apple Devices app to download back up files from all of our devices to this drive since it has plenty of disk space). For my needs this has been the perfect solution for going through older drives to save information we didn’t want to loose - all of the pictures I’ve saved off of my dad’s old drives was well work the price of the docking station since there were hundreds of pictures from both sets of my grandparents that my father had scanned on these drives. I’m now exporting all of these pictures to thumb drives so that my sisters and cousins are getting copies of them. Some pictures my cousins have never seen and they whole family is so happy they have been saved.

VERY Impressed..... This cloned my 1T Linux Mint fully encrypted HDD to a 2T fully encrypted Linux Mint SSD drive offline :D It showed visual status of cloning progress too. It's important that you don't disconnect in the middle of cloning because that will very likely cause a mess! No matter what OS you are cloning, I would recommend this SABRENT USB 3.0 to SATA I/II/III Dual Bay External Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5" disks (I didn't try it on 3.5" but it looks like it would fit). For me, the functionality was spot on. It's plastic, so lightweight, but did it's job. It's a device that is meant to sit on a flat surface and not something that moves around so sturdiness was not a concern. The disks plugged in correctly, and connected well. Background: I wasted SO much time trying to do this clone with cloning software! By doing this offline with this little machine I didn't have to deal with all the conflicts & issues or dealing with cloning software that made a mess of everything. Windows OS wants to control everything, so it's better to take any Windows OS drive out, clone the Linux drive, install the newly cloned Linux drive and then add back the Windows OS if you want them to live in the same computer. Be patient - My Linux Mint OS install HDD was less than a month old so the disk was not at all full (I was testing out the OS on my older HDD first to see if I liked the version first). The entire cloning process took a little over 13 hours to clone the 1T HD to a larger 2T SSD, but like I said, everything was encrypted and the SSD was wiped a few times prior to this trying the annoying cloning software that didn't work. I have worked on UNIX/Linux operating systems all my career - however I would never have thought to switch to Linux OS on my laptop if it weren't for Microsoft ending support of Windows10. I can't stand Windows 11 with everything in my face and no privacy. I'm now looking forward to using this on other OS disks (Windows and Linux) and as a docking station. It's definitely worth the price :)

I regularly have a need to temporarily connect SATA HDDs or SSDs to my computer, either to pull off some data, to wipe them clean or to run a "burn-in" test on a new HDD. In the past I used a powered SATA to USB adapter and put the bare drive onto my table (or rather onto a mat on my table to minimize vibrations). This unit is the more sophisticated version of such an adapter and makes my desk look less like a lab and more like an office. The unit provides two SATA connectors to connect two drives in parallel and even the option to perform an offline copy from one drive to another (which I did not test). It comes with a manual printed in color on high-quality paper, however the only important info I took from there is that the drive(s) should be inserted BEFORE turning on the unit. That means that the unit apparently does not have hot-plugging/hot-swapping ability (or at least it isn't officially supported). The unit has a power switch and a clear plastic cover to protect the device from dust, while not in use. Unfortunately though that plastic cover has no cut-outs for the connected power and usb cable, so it looks a little slapdash on my desk. The unit also has some padded feet, however these are very thin and do no prevent vibrations from HDDs to transmit to your desk. As a consequence I will be buying some thicker adhesive rubber feet to mitigate this. After using the unit for a few days I can say that so far it has been very reliable. I used it to do read and write tests on two HDDs (4TB and 14TB) and it has performed well. I have connected the unit to a USB 3.1 gen 1 (5Gb/s) port on my computer, which is the maximum connection speed that this unit can operate in (so no point plugging it into a 10Gb/s port). However for HDDs the performance will be dictated by speed that the HDD can provide anyway. During a linear read and write test, the speed was as high as 260 MB/s for some parts of my 14TB HDD (a WD Red Pro), but - as expected - lower in other parts of the disk). For an old 4TB disk the read and write speed was 50MB/S, so this unit can definitely keep up with current HDDs. However in principle the 5Gb/s transfer speed on the USB 3.0 interface of the unit is 18% lower than what SATA III allows for (6Gb/s), though these are theoretical speeds. To test the limits of the transfer rate, I also tested this with a 2TB Crucial MX500 2.5" SSD, the highest transfer speed on a sequential read test was about 405 MB/s. CrystalDiskMark 8 showed max. sequential read speeds of 460 MB/s for reading 5 1GiB Blocks. So the interface is plenty fast with one drive installed, at least for my needs. However when running two WD Red Pro 20TB HDDs in parallel and running a sequential write on both at the same time, the data transfer speed dropped to 160 MB/s at the beginning of the disk, then slowly increased to ca. 190 MB/s about two thirds through and then dropped toward 125 MB/s at the end of the disk. So there is definitely some overhead, when using two drives at the same time. All in all I am very pleased with this unit so far. I would deduct half a star for the clunky cover and the thin feet, but at 4.5 stars a round-up to 5 stars seems more fair than a round-down to 4 stars. I have some more HDD burn-in testing to do in the coming days, and I will update this review, if my view on this unit materially changes.

Update: 10-25-2023 I formatted my one of the drives in my new Sabrent Docking system and the speed more than doubled with the exact same file I used yesterday. Yesterday I was getting max 50MB/s on a 1.6TB File Today I am getting 164MB/s on the same 1.6TB File Transfer both NTSF. So, great improvement. Excellent Indeed. 10-24-2023 I got this because I have 4 OLD HDD's THAT I still want to use to back things up to. The reasons I picked this were 1. Low Cost 2. Has a Fan so no overheating, 3. Can fit both HDD 3.5 Inch and SDD 2.5 inch Hard Drives 4. It also has a cloning option built in. It was very simple to install. Literally just plug and play. My New PC recognized the Drives Straight Away. They simply act as a large volume flash drive for those wondering. I have a 2 TB, 8 TB, 4 TB and 6 TB My New computer uses the latest technology and was rather spendy so I didn't want to purchase any more hard drives just to fit inside the computer. So, for $88 plus tax it was a good deal. I am copying all of my documents, photos and personal videos about 1.6TB over from one of the HDD to another HDD in the Sabrent Dock and I am getting about 50 MB/s. Rather slow but I didn't format the old drive prior to the copy and I regret that now. I think I would have gotten better speeds had I reformatted prior to the copy. Overall I am very pleased with the Dock and Highly recommend it for anyone so long and you don't have a dog or say children that may accidentally knock it over. The drives themselves won't take much of a jostle but the dock although plastic works very well and as intended. CHEERS!

This item was delivered on time and was not packaged in an Amazon box, which was surprising. Nonetheless, the Sabrent package is as sturdy and professional as I have come to expect from the brand. Short version: This docking station worked just as I expected. The 4 HDDs I inserted into it were recognized immediately by the OS (Windows 11 Home) exactly as they were when they were installed in the PC the docking station is now connected to. My only complaint is that the slots that the drives sit in are not suited for slim profile drives. I had to insert a small piece of cardboard into the slot along with the one slim profile HDD (first drive on the right in the photo) to help it stay upright. Other than that, I am satisfied and will continue to use Sabrent equipment for my PC and network needs. Long version: I have been building my own PCs for years with great success. The current iteration uses a Gigabyte motherboard mounted in an Antec gaming tower enclosure with three SATA drives installed in addition to two M.2 drives, one of which hosts the OS. When I decided that I needed more drive space and there were not enough power plugs on the existing power supply to accommodate an additional HDD, I decided that a docking station was the way to go. Since I have been using Sabrent networking accessories for years, it was the logical choice. I currently use a Sabrent USB hub attached to my TP-Link router to share 4 "My Passport" drives on my home network and it works well. When this docking station arrived, I removed the 3 HDDs from the PC, mounted them in the dock along with the fourth drive, and powered the system back up. The drives were recognized in the same configuration as they were when mounted in the PC. I did make sure the drives were mounted in the dock's slots (A, B, C, and D) in the same order as they were connected to the PC's SATA slots (0, 1, 2, and 3). I'm not sure that was necessary, but it seemed reasonable to me. Subsequently, the drive shares show up on the other PCs on the home network just as they were before the installation of the dock. That is exactly what I was expecting. As a bonus, my PC now seems to run cooler without having to contend with powering the HDDs and dealing with the heat they generate, which is now dissipated into the air. Highly recommended.

This is a great hard drive docking station! It works really well and is consistent! My hard drive was originally in a my book external drive and the power source died. I got this docking station and haven't had any problems. I would definitely recommend this to anyone!

Would buy again - my initial thoughts. I just finished my first use of this product. I have about 18 old hard drives taken from computers going back 20 years or so. Oh, I also use Linux. That might figure in here. I plugged this into my Zorin computer and saw that the computer did not see the unit but this proved to be operator error. Upon putting a drive into the Sabrent my computer immediately recognized that drive. I tested all 4 bays and each worked great. If you have a stack of old drives and you want to check them out and transfer files between them this is a fantastic unit. So this is a definite would buy!

The old SSD was having BSOD on missing files. Ran as advertised. Cloned my C drive fast. I discovered that I had to do three boots to get it to come up the 1st time; windows was detecting the hardware and stopping. The drive cloned was a Samsung 860 EVO 250 GB to a new 870 EVO 500 GB. The Sabrent only used 250 GB of the 500 GB with 250 being unallocated. I will have to manually delete and recreate the hidden recovery partition myself to pick up the extra 250 GB.

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Instant plug and play. Zero issues and hdd detected immediately by OS.

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It does what it's says in the description and it does well. Solid piece of hardware, so far very reliable!

I used other docking station , but this one the best and support HDD and as well SSD with large capacity upto 10 TB.