StarTech.com Portable SATA Duplicator & USB / eSATA Dock Review
by Ganesh T S on September 6, 2011 6:50 PM EST- Posted in
- Gadgets
Dock Mode
In the first dock mode test, we connected the 128 GB Kingston SSD to the 'Destination' port of the SATDUPUE. On the PC, we had the 120 GB OCZ Vertex SSD.
Docked SSD Transfer Rates (MBps)
| eSATA | USB | |
|---|---|---|
| Read from SATDUPUE to PC | 138.27 | 38.57 |
| Write from SATDUPUE to PC | 154.71 | 28.34 |
In the second dock mode test, we connected the Seagate Barracuda LP 2000 GB drive to the SATDUPUE and retained the OCZ SSD in the PC.
Docked HDD Transfer Rates (MBps)
| eSATA | USB | |
|---|---|---|
| Read from SATDUPUE to PC | 110.38 | 37.42 |
| Write from SATDUPUE to PC | 107.02 | 28.12 |
In eSATA mode with the hard disk attached, the unit consumed around 9.6W of power on an average. The power consumption is heavily dependent on the type of disk attached to the unit.
Duplicator Mode
In order to determine the characteristics in the duplicator mode, we tested the cloning of both SSDs and HDDs. The table below summarizes our observations:
SATDUPUE Duplicator Mode Characteristics
| Source | Destination | Time | Xfer Rate(MBps) | Av. Power(W) | Max. Temp. (C) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 128 GB SSD | 2 TB HDD | 16m 45s | 127.36 | 9.8 | 49 |
| 120 GB SSD | 128 GB SSD | 10m 12s | 196.08 | 8.4 | 47 |
| 2 TB Samsung HDD | 2 TB Seagate HDD | 5h 17m 28s | 104.99 | 15.9 | 65 |
The temperature towards the end of the cloning process with a Ryobi non-contact infrared thermometer on the upper and lower sides of the SATDUPUE. The readings have an accuracy of +-5 C. The power consumption reported is the average power consumed over the course of the cloning, as measured using a Watts Up Pro power analyzer.
Though StarTech.com claims only 72 MBps transfer rate in clone mode, we found that SSDs could deliver much higher rates. Even hard disks were found to have better performance than claimed. However, waiting for more than 5 hours to get a 2 TB drive cloned does test one's patience. Support for 6 Gbps SATA ports in the JMB352U bridge could have helped here.
All in all, the SATDUPUE works better than it claims. It is available on StarTech.com for less than $80, but can be found for a much lower price point at various resellers like TigerDirect. We conclude the review with a list of the pros and cons of the SATDUPUE:
Pros:
- Cloning rates of more than 190 MBps (when suitable SSDs are used)
- Multipurpose gadget with both eSATA / USB dock as well as clone mode
- JBOD configuration for attached drives over USB 2.0
- Easily portable form factor
Cons:
- Product and power adapter cables appear very fragile. The user needs to be very careful when dealing with multiple 3.5" HDDs and the SATA connectors on the SATDUPUE.
- Product gets quite hot to touch and needs proper heat dissipation when operating
- Comparable product from Bytecc (BT-340) seems to be much cheaper
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Nickel020 - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
I didn't know such a product exists, and I'm now considering getting one. I like it that AT now occasionally does short reviews like this. As long as the lon reviews keep coming, more is better.To omit information because the reader may assume it is a terrible practice. I always like reviews that are very detailed - if they're well structured, they can still be enjoyable to read. I should not need to go to the manufacturer's homepage for further info after reading a product review.
"A summary paragraph is much more professional. "
You're not being serious, are you? The purpose of a review is to present original and available information in an understandable way and help make a purchasing decision (not look "professional" and only understandable for elitist users). Pro/Con lists help a lot there from a didactic standpoint. I wish AT would use them more, like JonnyGuru does for example. They make information considerably easier to grasp than a wall of text.
It's also called a summary for a reason. It's meant to readable stand-alone. Hence the name. Hence the need to re-state information.
lpjz290 - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
Reikon, you're talking through your hoop! The purpose of the articles on this well-respected site is to help us make informed buying decisions, not to present to the IEEE or some other research organizations as research papers and the likes!In order to keep readers informed,there is a need to repeat what features the products have and what they can do. Otherwise, what's the point of even doing a review?
The use of bullets is very useful to reinforce what the product is supposed to be good at, or whether the product is worth considering. And if you don't know, bullets do a better job at helping readers digest the huge amounts of information. nobody will want to re-read an entire page of text just to recap!
If you want to be so elitist and make everything as you perceive to be "professional", please leave this site and start your own.
Reikon - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
*sigh* Okay, I might have been a bit harsh to say the article itself was bad. It's just there's way too much useless and redundant information that makes the article SEEM like it's from a site that has nothing to really say.I still stand by the pro/con list specifically in this review is almost pointless. The vast majority of the info is obvious (function, size) or is in an easy to read table just a little bit above the pro/con list. He could have easily turned it into a several sentence summary that's still very easy to read, but instead it looks like a padded list to create "content."
sleepeeg3 - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
It's an adapter. How much is there really to say? Sheesh.colmiak - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
agreed. quality review just like all anandtech articles.this a small product with not much to say and the cons/pros list is great way to summarize a short article. i mean... theres not much more to say :)
dhuhtala - Tuesday, September 6, 2011 - link
The most important thing to me is to be able to manage the size of the partitions - I'm almost always replacing a hard drive with a larger capacity drive. There's no mention here as to whether or not this device supports increasing the size of the target volume. I'm assuming it won't...which makes the device completely useless to me...ganeshts - Tuesday, September 6, 2011 - link
Volume management needs to be done on the PC.For example, when I cloned the SSD to the HDD, all the partitions on the SSD got reflected onto the HDD, but the remaining ~1.7 TB of space on the HDD showed up as unallocated in the Windows Disk Management console. I was able to make this into a separate partition without affecting the cloned data.
rustycurse - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
quotes: "However, waiting for more than 5 hours to get a 2 TB drive cloned' & "Product gets quite hot to touch and needs proper heat dissipation when operating" ......at least ...you can boil (warm) your cup of coffee (tea).....;)
Take care...;)
P.S. Anyway... thanks to all Anandtech team for keeping us informed
c4v3man - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
Unless the device is certified as blocking all writes, and making no changes whatsoever to the source disk, then this device will simply DESTROY evidence, not duplicate it. There's a reason why Tableau and other manufacturers can charge $200+ for devices that do less... It's because they are certified, serial-numbered devices that preserve the integrity of the evidence in a repeatable verifiable manner, and are reliable products that get the job done.Now for 99.9% of our tasks at our shop, we use similar devices to this Startech unit, and they work very well. Most people don't need to forensically duplicate a hard drive, so this is a good/great product. The article, however, shouldn't claim a use that it's not capable of performing.
Spoooon - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
I interpreted it as a list of possible uses for this type of device, not uses specific to this brand and model device.