Hard Drive Docking Station, USB 3.2 Gen 1 Hard Drive Dock for 2.5 or 3.5 inch SATA HDD SSD, Aluminum HDD Docking Station with 3 USB A Ports and One Charging Port, Support Offline Clone

I got this BELCHERI docking station because I have many different hard drives to which I back up data. I also frequently help friends and family recover data from failed laptops/desktops. The docking station is a great solution to help with these situations.[ Compatibility ]I thoroughly tested multiple 2.5" and 3.5" drives of various sizes (256G to 4TB). All worked as expected on multiple operating systems (see below). All of the drives I tested seated well and handled large transfers without issue.I tested with Linux (multiple popular distro's), Mac (current stable), and Windows (multiple major versions). In every case, the drives auto-connected and worked well.[ Performance ]This docking station could read and write data at near-native speeds for the drives I used (near the maximum potential speed of the drive), assuming all components (cable, USB port, etc.) supported it. Copying large amounts of data and cloning drives performed well throughout the entire operation.I didn't experience any heat-related issues, even when both drives were under significant load. There is no cooling in the docking station (fans or otherwise), but the drives are in the open air and separated by a fair amount of space.[ General Operation ]This device is absolutely plug-and-play! I only needed to give it power, insert the drives, and connect a USB cable, and it just worked! No drivers or configuration was required. I also used several native and 3rd party diagnostic utilities with the docking station to fix or recover data from problem drives.[ Cloning Drives ]I was excited to see that drives could be cloned quickly offline using the hard drive docking station. As advertised, cloning drives of the same size worked. I also successfully cloned a smaller drive (512G) to a larger drive (1TB).Note that the offline-cloning only works if both drives are healthy. The cloning fails if a problem with a drive or data is detected. In those cases, more advanced troubleshooting and recovery steps are needed.[ Recovering Failed Drives ]I have several SATA drives with intermittent issues and others that have failed. The hard drive docking station was able to mount several of the drives known to have intermittent issues. I speculate that the docking station's power is solid and can "spin up" drives that may not be healthy, but I have no way to verify this. Either way, it worked well, and I could mount several drives I thought were dead. That said, it wasn't able to mount all of the drives that I thought were bad.Recovering data from failed drives is tricky and YMMV. In my testing, I was able to connect drives using the docking station to advanced software utilities and diagnose/repair/recover drives. I was very impressed with how it performed! It does a great job of presenting the drive in its current state to a desktop or laptop.[ Quality ]The docking station has a solid metal case and is very sturdy. The SATA connectors are high quality and easily accommodated any drive I tested. Once seated, the drives maintained connectivity, even when I bumped or moved the base during copy operations. I didn't go crazy trying to knock it offline, but it handled regular desk activity well. The cables (power & USB) plugin very securely. All the cables fit tightly and do not come out easily.** Please note that trying to mount different types of drives that may have failed is very tricky. There are no guarantees, and the methods used can vary widely. In my testing, known good drives worked well in the drive docking station. Any mentions of recovering data or running utilities to recover data are specific to the drives and systems that I used. Your experience may vary.

My husband and I have each lost more than we care to think about to windows update (known issue :p) to include a couple of machines. We are now trying to retrieve what we can from old drives, cards, machines.He tested this with a SATA drive on his windows 10 (64) deskktop, and said he could see it in system, thjough it did not show up on his desktop. He could not tell what the oS was, the partition, format, really could not get any information abouit the drive on his desktoip. He then plugged it into an old windows 7 laptop. The laptop updated the driver, and he was able to read the drive... He said the drive was from a windows XP machine, and was 32 bit, not 64 (speculating that was maybe why win 10 did not open it) but... a 64 bit machine ought to be able to read a drive which has info stored in a 32 bit format.He felt that though it is supposed to do offline cloning (not tried) it was not particularly useful if it could not be used with a windows 10 desktop. There was no driver included, or pointed to in the manual. Windows 7 did the update and read it. Windows 10 did not.

UPDATE 2024-05-31:This dock has never really seemed to work correctly, so I decided to update the review. Drives sometimes connect as "READ ONLY", transfer speed is a fraction of what it should be. When a drive is connected/removed, it seems like it is not correctly reporting to Windows what is going on, as drives get locked into an "unitialized" state. When the dock is powered down & unplugged from USB, everything goes back to normal. I can use different USB drive docks with the drives, and they work perfectly & with proper transfer speed. This dock is going in my junk box.------------------------------------------------------All of your extra mechanical hard drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs) become hot-swappable storage devices when you use this hard drive docking system. If you don't understand what this product is, think of it as an SD card flash reader, but for bare hard drives and SSDs. It provides two slots for plugging in SATA 2.5" and 3.5" drives of almost any capacity. You also get a handy USB hub built into the front of the case.Offline hard drive cloning is a feature found on some dual HDD docking stations, such as this one. It permits the cloning or identical copying of one drive to another drive without the need for a computer. It isn't something that is going to be used all that often by the average computer user. The advanced computer user already knows that there are much better ways to duplicate drives using any of the freely available partitioning and backup tools that are out there. The biggest reason to ignore the built-in drive cloning feature is the lack of feedback. All you get during the cloning process is some flashing LEDs and an LED lighting up for each 25% completed. In fact, the manual advises you to ensure that there are no existing errors on the drives, or the cloning process may fail. If you are going to use error-checking software to verify the drives, you might as well use a partition tool that checks for errors during the clone process. There is no feedback about minor or major errors, SMART status, speed of transfer, etc. When using drive cloning software, you receive all of these benefits and more. So in my humble opinion, this feature remains merely a bonus and is not something that I would base your purchase upon. I did, of course, test out the drive cloning function. I cloned an 80GB 3.5" drive to a 500GB 3.5" drive. Everything went smoothly and was completed in the expected amount of time. Just for fun, I tried to copy the larger drive to the smaller one. The docking station just checked the drives and then refused to proceed. This is a function that partitioning software can do with ease, as it can shrink or expand partitions as long as unused space is available.The docking station does not allow for removing one drive without completely turning off the unit. It only has a single main power switch. More advanced dual-bay docks have separate on and off buttons for each bay, allowing for independent operation when using both bays. Pulling a drive out while it is powered up is, of course, possible, but the best practice is to power down that individual drive first. With this dock, you will need to finish all activity on both drives before powering down to swap or remove one drive. Another thing that seemed clunky was having to pull the USB cable when wanting to use the built-in cloning function. It should have a button dedicated to interrupting the USB connection. Most of my USB hubs have a separate switch for each USB port, so it should have been easy to include in the design.The dock is quite well built, utilizing an aluminum case instead of the usual black plastic. The heavier, the better, as you do not want powered-up mechanical hard drives sliding all over your desk. The three USB3 ports (and a fourth port that provides a charging function only) on the front are extremely handy and provide a good reason to keep the dock on your desk all the time. Unfortunately, they stop functioning when the power button is pushed. If you want to power down to insert or remove a drive, everything connected to the built-in USB hub will disconnect. This is another reason why the lack of separate power buttons for each bay is such a negative.THE GOOD:Adds two hot-swappable drive bays, three USB 3.0 ports, and a charge-only USB port, all using only one USB cable.The built-in cloning function works well, but is limited in functionality.DISAPPOINTING STUFF:The power switch turns EVERYTHING off at once. There is no way to power down a specific slot or port.It offers limited status reporting during cloning. If it fails, you have no idea why. There are no error codes, etc.The drive slots have a self-closing dust cover that only covers 75% of the slot.