StarTech SATADOCK22UE Review

Benchmark Reviews has put a plethora of storage enclosures and systems through their paces and all of the predecessors fell neatly into readily recognizable categories. The StarTech SATADOCK22UE is a horse of a slightly different color offering features that bridge the existing product categories it's neither a case nor storage array, but has the capacity to allow access to single data drives as well as two drives independently or as a RAID array. It's a niche product with stealth appeal for main stream users who think outside the box. The SataDock product line comes in 4 flavors: single drive USB only desktop bay (SATADOCKU2E), single drive USB & eSATA desktop bay (SATADOCKU2), 5.25" Bay Dual Drive eSATA (SATADOCK525) and the top of the line dual drive, dual eSATA desktop dock SATADOCK22UE which we will be reviewing. While no doubt the intended audience for the SataDock product line is mainly corporate or professional PC repair and maintenance organizations, this small wonder has the potential to simplify the lives of a much broader audience if they can related to it's less obvious uses.

As a long time PC Enthusiast I have a constantly growing pool of hard drives from systems that are "removed from service" as they are replaced with newer, better, faster equipment. Those drives have typically sat in ASD bags on shelf until a drive failure or additional drive space is needed on a particular system. I have often thought it would great to find a better way to tap my unused storage resources and my hope is that the SATADOCK22UE from StarTech will give me that opportunity. I had visions of backing up entire systems to HDD, faster migration of HD movies from my desktop to my Media PC, easier imaging of systems when upgrading, offline archival of photo and home video and the list goes on... While most of these goals arguably can be accomplished with a NAS the issue I have is that I am always running out of space (in spite of having a THECUS N5200Pro), and yet I have a significant amount of available storage effectively unusable because it is inconvenient to pry open a machine to drop a drive in if I need to get some data off of it. We'll put the SATADOCK22UE through its paces and see how effectively it can help leverage my data storage resources.

About the company: StarTech

Since 1985 StarTech.com has provided a complete range of IT and A/V products for a diverse customer base that spans many channels, including government, education and industrial facilities to name just a few. Our product offerings include I/O Cards, Data Storage, Cables, Converters, Extenders, A/V Switches, KVM and server management equipment.

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