StarTech.com 4-Bay Hard Drive Duplicator and Eraser, External Standalone 1:3 HDD/SSD Cloner/Copier, USB 3.0 / eSATA to SATA Docking Station, Hard Disk Copier / Sanitizer / Wiper Tool (SATDOCK4U3RE)

This is a great dock! Allows move to connect two SATA drives to my PC, also supports stand alone Duplicate and Erase. It’s built very well with high quality materials. It connects easily. It is fast and reliable. The stand alone cloning works with drives formatted and used with any Operating System. The cloning must be done to a drive that is the same storage size or greater than the drive being cloned. If cloning to a larger drive, the partition on the larger drive will be the same size as the cloned drive, so you will need participating software to either create another partition in the remaining, unused space or to expand the partition to use the space of entire new drive. It would be really nice if StarTech could provide an option when cloning, to have the device automatically expand the partition after cloning is complete to the full size of the drive. (A little hint to StarTech for a new feature!)

With a hard drive failing on a Windows 7 PC, scheduled backups had not completed for over a month and I hadn't noticed. SMART failures were increasing and old external USB2 SATA interface did no better than the PC in reading drive contents without failures. So I took a chance and got this StarTech standalone SATA drive copier and it worked like a charm! Took a 160GB drive Windows 7 image to a 500GB drive in about 75 minutes. Saved many hours of time fussing with restoring from old backups and recreating updates of user files!Here are my summary pros & cons:+ core duplicator function works well if not very fast as a drive copier+ erase function is a nice, relatively quick function, 1 pass only+ works very well to allow one to upgrade from a small old SATA drive to a newer larger capacity SATA drive+ verified function up to 3TB as target drive+ % complete LEDs work well to indicate progress in disk copying or erasureCons & quirks:- the copy function is not very fast. A 2TB drive took overnight, but the above 160GB clone took about 75 minutes- USB3 performance not up to other USB3 StarTech SATA drive adapters, but is 50-75% better than USB2- disk erase is only a single pass erase, so does not suffice for meeting HITECH/HIPAA or other legal requirements for deleting data- entire interface MUST have a power reset to switch from duplicator to SATA to USB3 interface (found in user forum not in manual)- the USB chipset does not pass SMART commands through, so cannot use to validate either drive SMART status- wish this had the eSATA interface which usually can pass through SMART queriesBottom line: if you need a small number of hard drives cloned, it works well on Windows (NTFS, FAT32) and Linux (ext2, ext3, ext4) partitions.[minor updates to review 2016-01-21, fine unit, especially for the current price MS]

This is a letter to StarTech support.. which is very fast, and helpful:The main issue with the docking station (which works fine, by the way) .. is the instructions. They are very poor.This unit, I assume, is a product designed in the US, and marketed world wide. I really don’t care if it’s made in China.. but, some of the Amazon buyers seem to care, in their reviews of this product.. And, that leads me to the second issue: The negative feedback by Amazon buyers.Many claimed the unit failed soon after purchase, others claimed it was DOA out of the box.. and there were issues about an included 3 amp power supply not supporting drives that require 4 amps total. By the way, (unlike in your reply email) my unit had a 3 amp power supply, and the replacement one from Amazon has a 3 amp PS. So if you are now supplying a 4 amp power supply with newer units, mine is probably an older version. These “problems” experienced by Amazon buyers, set me up to be ready for a possible problem when I first did the hardware installation:"Quick Start” instructions, with minimal explanation, designed for people who already have experience with a product, often results in failure, when the lesser experienced try to follow such instructions ... that’s why they invented the ‘Tutorial”. It too, is often simple; however, it tends to include every significant step, along with comments as to what to expect with each step. Like the re-cycling of “power’ .. to shift modes from dock to clone… and the wait time to mount a drive.. and what to expect from the LED’s at each step.The following is where the StarTech instructions for the SATDOCK2REU3 get it wrong, and can lead to the conclusion that the unit is defective, when in fact, there is nothing wrong with it:1) Hardware installation, step 2, says to connect the USB 3.0 cable (why?)2) Then, two drives are to be installed .. one to be a source, and the other to be a target … suggesting that this is to be a cloning operation.3) Step 5 says to power up .."and you are now ready to use the unit" …. Really? To do what? … clone, monitor the two drives using the PC during cloning? Use the drive as a dock? Nothing about those options is mentioned.When I did the above steps with the first unit, first time, with the intent to clone… there was no LED indication of power on. (the target drive was unformatted) After powering off, then on ..all four blue LED’s came on the source drive blinked a few times .. so I moved on to the "Hardware Operation”:NOTE: Destination drive must be same size or larger (that’s good to know) … what about formatting? If one was going to clone, does the target drive need to be formatted? Nothing is said about that..The next instruction was to hold in the clone button… I did… for a long time… nothing happenedWhat followed was a frustrating series of trying to figure out what was wrong, and not appreciating how long it takes to “mount” a drive using the unit as a dock. (with my PC.. about 10 seconds) There was a lot of Red Power LED only .. nothing about “red” indication when cloning. I looked at “Hard Drive Duplication Mode” .. Red was possible.. but only if the USB cable was not connected I tried a cloning without the USB cable connected .. there were no examples of what to expect from the LED’s prior to cloning … Nothing worked ..I assumed the unit was another dreaded DOA (thank you Amazon reviews) .. and sent it back to Amazon.. they sent another the same day (love Amazon) and I received it Monday.Sunday, while I was waiting for UPS to pick up the return on Monday.. I decided to try again.. this time with a formatted drive for the target. I plugged in the drives (no USB cable) powered up, pressed in the clone button … waited.. NO red LED’s appeared … got tired.. released the button.. and the amber (running back and forth) started … “it was cloning!” … when finished (about 1.3 hours).. I was able to mount the cloned drive using the USB cable.Tried to cancel the “return” to Amazon .. (it hadn’t shipped yet) .. but, was notified about an hour later .. the new one was on the way.. too bad.. re-packaged it for return.Was a little concerned that the 4 RED LED’s never came on while the clone button was pressed… but, it did make a clone.UPS picked up the return on Monday, and USPS dropped off the new one.. which I tested… following my modified instructions .. re-cloned the same drive.. this time quickly got 4 RED LED’s .. and everything works great.. (no idea why I never saw the 4 Red IED’s when I used the returned one)I recommend that StarTech rewrite the instructions.. more like a tutorial.. and don’t assume that a short “quick start” is intuitive… it isn’t .. :-)........Note:StarTech replied that the USB cable should not be connected during the cloning operation, and they would look into the power supply .. it is supposed to be 4 amps