Header banner
Revain logoHome Page
Arunprasath Elliott photo
Hungary, Budapest
1 Level
722 Review
45 Karma

Review on StarTech Com 10Gbps Dual Bay Dock SATA by Arunprasath Elliott

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Good 4-bay USB 3.0 docking station but limited by 6.5A power supply

The SDOCK4U33 is a great docking station in its own right. I've seen several questions about using Seagate's new 8TB hard drives. Using a factory 6.5 amp power supply, I found I could run three 8TB archived Seagates (ST8000AS0003) at the same time, but not four at the same time. Since these heavy drives draw 2 amps to spin up, I needed a power supply of at least 8 amps. Higher amperage 12V power supplies are readily available, but typically the 4-pin DIN voltage assignment will not match the Startech power supply. Startech Support was helpful in discussing the issue but did not provide an answer on the 6TB exceeded. Frustrated with this, I bought a 12.5A KFD 150W Power Supply 12V 12.5A for FSP150-AHA ECS Buddie UB 4m23 BUDDIE ECS D1S4-2 4Pin Power Supply. The voltage assignment was wrong, but all I had to do was rotate the connector 90 degrees and break the small metal tab that fits into the slot. The metal tab is designed to prevent people from doing this. I've now applied enough power to run four large 8TB Seagate hard drives at full capacity for several days. No overheating or other issues. If you do this, check the stress distribution very carefully. With the flat part of the connector down, the two pins on the left should be +12 volts and the two on the right should be 0/ground. This is sometimes written as 1+, 2-, 3+, 4- and some product pages show a small pin voltage diagram, just like the label on the 6.5 inch power supply that Startech offers. I now have a couple of 16TB shared storages. Hard drives with a total capacity of 32 TB working simultaneously. The same trick should work for Seagate 10TB hard drives as I've seen 1.8 amp specs for boot up. If I can find a few thousand dollars more for a set of four 10TB drives I'll try.

Pros
  • Availability
Cons
  • I have no negative feelings, everything is fine