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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ganeshts - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
Bad sectors are skipped, so you do get the good data. In case of a failed drive, this is not a suitable product for that (look at my comment in reply to mariush's post above)Samus - Thursday, September 8, 2011 - link
needs usb 3.0 :(pandemonium - Friday, September 9, 2011 - link
I'm impressed. Not particularly since this is a nicely done niche product, but the fact that they market the speeds less than what they actually did in the bench. That's admirable.7Enigma - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
Agreed! Nice bit of honest marketing for once.mozozozo - Sunday, September 11, 2011 - link
Does anyone know of a software HDD Duplicator that can do more than 1:1 cloning, say 1 master to 3 slave etc. I know there are PC independent hardware solutions but they are quite expensive.If the software is available one could built a cheap 3 hdd duplicator with a basic 4 sata port motherboard.jonathan1683 - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link
I would like to state my thoughts as well on the article since I have never seen a device like this and it actually made me want one. After the review I really didn't know exactly what it did and I do not agree with the person said that you shouldn't put info that was available elsewhere. I would rather read it in the review so thanks for keeping the info. Maybe if people really dislike it you can have a manufacturer info paragraph so people can decide not to read it. I think it should have given more info on to what it did. I think the article assumed I knew what devices like this do. I understand somewhat what it does, but I still think I need to visit their site to understand completely. I think just the words hard drive duplicator would have been helpful. I thought it was duplicating interfaces to do IDE to USB functions. I also agree with mariush these questions are valid and I would have also liked to know how stable it worked with a bad drive and I would also have liked you to include your personal opinion on the power supply because it was the first thing that deterred me from buying it. If you include info like this in your review it would prompt manufacturers to make smaller devices. Why do they even need power bricks this big for such a small device? The fact that you actually tested the device and thought what we were thinking should give you reason to add it in the review because you had the same thoughts and questions. Also I thought the comment was dumb that someone asked if it could do a function like acronis migrate easy when it cloned data to a bigger size drive because the review said it could use larger drives I assumed it could. I thought it was great, but it actually doesn't and you would have to make a new partition which to me make is not what I would want. The info about the unallocated space should have been included. Anyways this is getting too long. This is my first time on the site and I am reading almost every article. Great site and thanks for the review.