StarTech.com 4-Bay USB 3.0 To SATA Hard Drive Docking Station, USB Hard Drive Dock, External 2.5/3.5" SATA III SSD/HDD Docking Station, Hot-Swap Hard Drive Bay, Top-Loading (SDOCK4U33),Black

This is one of the best hard drive docks I have ever used. I have been through dozens of docks and I have a pile of them I have stopped using for a variety of reasons. Here are a few reasons why I recommend this dock over others. 1. Separate power buttons for each drive. Each drive can be powered on individually and ejected individually from within Windows. This is a big deal. I have several multi drive docks from other manufacturers where you have to load and eject all drives in the dock as a set. 2. Cooling Fans. This is a must. Without active cooling, drives will get uncomfortably hot. The operating temperature of most drives should not exceed 50 degrees Celsius. In docks without any type of cooling, I've seen drives regularly exceed 50 degrees with extended use. There are 2 cooling fans in this dock. One for the left side and one for the right. Each cooling fan has an adjustment control on the back of the unit to adjust the speed of the fan or turn it off completely. Both fans will automatically turn off if all drive bays are off. 3. UASP support. UASP stands for USB Attached SCSI Protocol. UASP support will ensure you get the best possible performance out of your hard drives. 4. Reliability. This is the most reliable USB 3.0 hard drive dock I have ever used. I have several other less expensive USB 3.0 docks that have cost me dozens of hours doing data recovery because they would stop responding during long file transfers I have not experienced a single drop-out while using this dock. I have a single complaint about this unit, it is not enough for me to lower my rating, but it is something I would like to see improved in a future model. This unit automatically turns off both cooling fans when all drives are turned off. If I only have drives in the left side of the unit, it would be nice if only the left cooling fan turned on and vice-versa.

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.

The StarTech - SDOCK4U33 .com 4 Bay USB 3.0 hard drive docking station is functionally nearly perfect. It operates seamlessly with Windows 10 even when connected to a USB Hub. My only thought about its function is that the fans that cool the unit seem to operate whether or not the unit is connected to the computer. I would have liked the fans to cease when the computer is off, but alas they run anyway. I get complete control over the individual drives as I expected, good input and output via USB 3.0. I found the unit somewhat over-priced, and I hope I'll be satisfied a long time later that the higher price was worth it. I had no issue with installing or using the dock. I replaced separate Thermaltake BlacX docks.

This dock just works. I've tried other brands, but often either: a) there is not enough power to support 4 drives simultaneously; and/or b) you must restart all drives to restart one; and/or c) you must restart your PC to have new drives placed in the dock recognised This unit suffers from none of those problems. I would say it is overpriced for what it is, but with built in fans and the ability to individually power on/off any of the 4 drives, it is in my opinion the best 4 bay drive dock you can buy. Works seamlessly in Windows 10. The LED lights are also very useful - they tell you when each of the 4 drives is powered on and also when each drive is being accessed. Worth the money if you need access to at least 4 drives.

This product has been a disappointment all around and I'm done with it. • I had to return two of these before getting this one, pre-tested by Startech. It is pretty reliable ONCE THE DRIVE CONNECTS. But initial connection is unreliable. Something is wrong with the controller design. It will sometimes take 5 minutes or more for a 4TB NTFS drive to connect. The same drives, with the same USB3 cable, going to the same USB3 computer port, will connect immediately in a cheap dual dock. I really wanted to like this but it's been such a hassle, so many times, that I regret ever getting involved with it. • The construction is very cheap. They took materials and techniques barely adequate for the $25 docks and just made it all bigger. The plastic is thin and every mechanical part bends, moves crookedly, or goes 'sproing'. The fan control knobs are bad. The fans are small and noisy. The (unnecessary) drive ejection paddles are particularly bad. Drives tend to vibrate and rattle, having no damping material. Much of the box is simply empty. These aren't QA issues; rather, every penny was saved in materials and construction. For the $150 market, this should be much more solid and intelligently designed. That's five times the cost and more than twice the size of a decent USB3 dual dock which works as it should. Startech does stand behind their products, meaning very good tech support and replacement policies. But they don't always design it well in the first place. This one is really regrettable since (A) it's expensive and (B) there's no competition / alternate choice. Somebody should make a good quad deck with individual controllers and power switches. This isn't it.

I've owned literally dozens of USB-to-SATA caddies and devices over the years - from USB 1.1, 2.0, to 3.0. They almost universally sucked and often just weren't reliable. This one breaks that cycle. I use this as a roaming ZFS "RAID-10" caddy on Linux. (Thought ZFS doesn't call that configuration "RAID-10". It's just a stripe of mirrors.) Works flawlessly and performs great. Linux sees all the relevant and correct information about the drives (layout, AF, SMART, etc.). That it spins down idle drives is a feature that cannot be oversold. I know of no other USB docks that do this, and it's important! My drives are either working very hard, or idle, with little in-between. I get good throughput on Linux. The fans are a nice touch. No real cons, although it would be nice if 3.5" drives fit a little more snugly, but they probably have to have clearance for variances among manufacturers.

Very nice. I like it. One way to improve is to have USB ports on this docking system. I run out of USB ports easily and with this massive docking sitting on my desk, would have been convenient if it had a couple of USB ports for me to use. But that's just a minor point. The actual docking served its purpose well. No problem experienced. Simple plug and play. Apparently other earlier models had problem with turning off individual hard drives. This model works fine, I can turn off or on individual hard drives as I please no problem.

I was using this to farm Chia plots (it's a crypto google it or don't) and in any temp over about 70 degrees ambient constant the whole device will overheat and somehow send a signal that crashes your USB drivers. I tried this on 3 different computers and one of them wasn't even able to recover after the crash. (making me have to hard power it down cause the mouse and keyboard were powered off) This happened with two separate units, so I know it wasn't just one isolated failure. (running 8 drives). On the whole good for short term use, but I'm not really sure why you'd need to use 4 drives for short term. Okay long term as long as you keep it temperature controlled. It might have killed a drive though, so ymmv. No such problems with the 2 HDD version. Maybe it runs cooler with fewer drives idk.

I tried an inexpensive Sabrent 4-unit external drive bay, but began having drive access errors and USB disconnections, while fully-loaded with HDDs that were >75% filled. The drives were pulling more power than the little unit (and it's power supply) could handle. But this StarTech unit is almost perfect. A little big, but has a large capacity power supply, and a very sturdy drive bay assembly. And two analog-control (dials) fans to keep it cool, even though the unit seems to power down the drives, as well. I have not encountered any issues with drive access, and the USB connection is stable. The independent on/off button for each drive is very useful, especially to power down an HDD drive before removal (hot-swapping an HDD when the drive is spinning should be avoided).

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.

Die Dockingstation (4fach) funktioniert sehr gut + ist wie beschrieben + abgebildet! Preis + Qualität stimmt! Kompatibilität mit Windows 8, 10, 11 optimal + ohne Fehler. Auch ein zu schnelles pausieren ist nicht der Fall. Ausserdem sind alle Festplatten einzeln schaltbar + die Lüfter einzeln regelbar (Lärm minimierung). Die Verpackung war stabil, neutral, effektiv. Lieferung erfolgte schnell. Also alles sehr empfehlenswert. Gern wieder! - *)Lieferant mißhandelte das erste Paket. Nach Rücksprache wurde SEHR schnell und unkompliziert die Ware abgeholt + erstattet. Die anschließende Neulieferung erfolgte blitzschnell ! Vielen Dank, gern wieder!

Matériel éfficace et très simple d'utilisation - sélection individualisée ou complète de tous les empacements - pratique Utilisé uniquement pour visualiser la bibliothèque et collections de films numérisés.

Der Gerätebeschreibung nach hätte ich erwartet, dass bei 4 eingesteckten Festplatten alle 4 EINZELN von Windows abgemeldet werden können - das ist leider nicht der Fall: Es erscheint nur ein Gerät in der entsprechenden Device-Liste. Man kann zwar (nach einer angemessenen Wartezeit nach der letzten Schreiboperation) eine Festplatte aus dem Dock entfernen, ohne das die anderen 3 Platten in ihren jeweiligen Transfers gestört werden, aber da schwingt gewissermaßen das Risiko der nicht ordnungsgemäßen Abmeldung (und damit evtl. Datenverlust) mit. Aus dieser Enttäuschung heraus der Punktabzug. EDIT: Ist wohl ein Windows-Problem. Schaltet man zwei oder mehr Festplatten zeitnah ein (d.h. nur mit wenigen Sekunden Abstand), so scheint Windows die zu einem "Auswurfgerät" zusammenzufassen. Ist der Zeitabstand größer, dann sind es mehrere solche Geräte - kurios. Ok, dann gibt es doch wieder einen Stern mehr.