IO CREST USB 3.0 Docking Station for 2.5" & 3.5" Sata III HDD - SI-ENC50070

Docking stations work well, for both 2.5" and 3.5" HDD.Connection speed is as of USB 3.0

Ok

Quit working after about 1 month of use

As expected.

The manufacturer provided me a sample to use and honestly review.I like the IO Crest USB 3.0 Docking station. In my IT practice I handle a lot of bare hard drives. I clone them for drive upgrades or recovery or make bit-by-bit copies for forensic analysis, use them for backups or just copy a few files to a new system for a client.Most of the time I've been putting these bare drives into a old system case and using a CD based disk cloning tool or I used my trusty and flexible but slow Apricorn USB 2.0 drive adapter. The IO Crest is a very civilized alternative for both 2.5in and 3.5in SATA III and earlier drives and with USB 3.0 speed it gets the job done quickly.The Docking Station comes with a power adapter, a USB 3.0 cable and a small booklet. The dock itself has an opening for a 2.5in form factor SATA drive and a fold-in flap that collapses when a 3.5in drive is placed into the dock. The base is large as needed to be stable but not overly large. One of my favorite features is the front panel power with touch sensitive (versus mechanical) button. I don't like the idea of putting a SATA drive in a "hot" SATA plug and I can clearly see when the power is on or off with the IO Crest Dock.The USB 3.0 interface is USB 3.0 fast. I ran some copy tests and a couple of crystalmark benchmarks and the dock seemed to move data as fast as the not all that new mechanical 2.5in and 3.5in drives I tried are able. Posting the benchmark results seems pointless as your drives will certainly get different results, depending on the drive. Bottom line - it's USB 3.0 fast when used with a USB 3.0 port.Like with any hard drive interface it's important to properly dismount your drive. The instructions cover this for Windows. As with most USB devices drives are generally mounted automagically when plugged in the the power on the IO Crest is turned on.The IO Crest Dock is a pretty simple device and one that makes using bare drives for many purposes easy. It works with Windows and Linux (I don't have a Mac, but expect it will work fine there too). I am very pleased. Now hooking up someone's hard drive is just dropping it into the dock and turning on the power. Easy Peasy! And that gets 5 stars for a simple product that just works.