Review on StarTech Com ESATA Drive Docking Station Computer Accessories & Peripherals by Vince Dickey

There are so many docking stations on the market with two USB 3.0 ports. However, I found that most of them are SATA 2 specification. Why? Because USB 3.0 is 5Gb/s and SATA 3 is 6Gb/s. It doesn't matter if you're only using one HDD, but it should cause bottlenecks if you're connecting an SSD. So far I've found products from two companies that support the SATA 3 specification: Startek and Highpoint. It also has a SATA 3 connector and there is no problem using the port multiplier if the connected controller supports it. However, I somehow found that moving data from one drive to another in the same dock wasn't as smooth as I expected. No problem with another dock's hard drive or one in the computer. Serial e-SATA 3 transfer rate: Controller: AMD SB 950 embedded SATA controller Transfer size: 5TB, many different files and sizes. Drive: Seagate Barracuda Compute 8TB. Speed between drives with the same but two different docking stations: 170 Mb/s. Speed between drives on a docking station: 75110 MB/s. I still haven't tried it with USB3, but between two different stations via USB 3 port approx. 130-150 Mbit/s. The controller was a single-chip StarTech 4 NEC chip and connected to a station for each USB 3 chip, which may have been due to my hasty setup skills. I will try again.