Product Added : February 8th, 2013
Category : Drives & Storage, External Hard Drives
"This Best Selling StarTech.com eSATA USB to SATA External Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5 or 3.5in Tends to SELL OUT VERY FAST! If this is a MUST HAVE product, be sure to Order Now to avoid disappointment!"
This eSATA/USB to SATA External HDD Dock Adapter provides immediate, swappable access to any 2.5in or 3.5in SATA (SATA, SATA II, SATA III) hard drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD) – without having to mount the hard drive, or install it in an enclosure! Large capacity drives (tested with up to 4TB 3.5" and 1TB 2.5" drives) can be used to greatly enhance your computer''s storage/backup capabilities. Simply connect this docking station to a computer using either eSATA or USB 2.0, and it''s as simple as inserting your 2.5in or 3.5in SATA hard drive into the dock whenever needed. A perfect solution for data recovery, drive imaging, and testing centers, or any environment that requires fast access to uninstalled/archived drives, the SATA HDD Dock supports plug and play installation on most operating systems. Plus, the HDD docking station supports data transfer speeds of up to 1.5 Gbps (using eSATA) and 480Mbps (using USB 2.0) between host and dock – ensuring effortless data dumps, backups and hassle-free file transfers. Double the value of this hard drive docking station, using a SATA to IDE hard drive adapter (SAT2IDEADP), which enables you to use any 2.5 or 3.5in IDE hard drive in a SATA hard drive dock slot.
Package contents:
1. dock (has on/off switch, activity indicator light)
2. power adapter (110-240 V)
3. Usb cable
4. esata cable
I am happy that it came with esata cable. Also I like the fact that activity indicator light is not very bright.
I like keeping an offsite backup of our home computer’s data (for assured survival of home movies, family pictures, etc.), and this dock (along with a couple of bare SATA drives) helps me with that. Plus, this approach is pretty much “future-proof” — when I need more space, I can upgrade the drives and sell off the current ones easily.
The base is well built, solid and both 3.5 & 2.5 drives fit in without any adapters. This way you can quickly swap out drives, but even if you use it just as one external drive the unit stands pretty solid and safe.
The connectors on the back are from the power supply, a USB and an eSata. It also has a On/Off switch which it handy when you charge drives.
I was positively surprised that it came with both a USB and an eSata cable. I didn’t expect the eSATA cable. The eSata connection is signifcantly faster then USB. USB usually maxes out at a little over 20 mb/sec. With the eSata cable I get twice that speed easily, but depending on the HDs used it can go even much higher.
I’m very happy with this dock, it works great and reliable so far. It works much better and more practical that other solutions or adapters.
Burning files and movies to DVD/BluRay was so time consuming that I never did it and when I did, the probability of problem-free reading of the disk was just not high enough. Not to mention, FINDING that disk later was also a pain.
Hard drives are down to 5 cents per GB (2TB for $99).
Since Win7 has a built in icon for ejecting eSATA drives, it is working well for me.
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