StarTech External Dual Hard Drive Dock review

A hard disk dock is a very useful tool for any PC aficionado to own. Instead of having to open up your PC case to retrieve data from an old disk, simply plug it in to a device such as this one from StarTech and your computer will see it as a connected external disk.

Another potential use is in disk duplication, and the two SATA slots of the StarTech can handle that too. The dock doesn’t have to be attached to the PC for this to take place, and it's simple to use: one LED indicates which mode the device is operating in, and a status bar provides progress updates on the cloning process. Each drive bay also has its own eject button.

The cloning functions work well, but using the StarTech as a dock could prove a little frustrating. There’s no support for SATA/600, which limits the potential of the device going forward, and there’s also no eSATA or USB 3 output. Instead, large amounts of data will take an age to transfer over the StarTech's USB 2 connection.

As expected, it proved slow in our transfer tests, taking more than two hours to clone a 500GB hard disk.

Given the lack of any exciting features, the £79 exc VAT price is also pretty steep, so while the StarTech External Dual Hard Drive Dock is undoubtedly a useful device to own, it's hardly the pinnacle of its category.

Author: Mike Jennings