Inateck SATA Docking Station Review

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Sata Dock 2

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Inateck Sata DockThe Inateck SATA dock has been tested on a a Windows 7 PC.

If like me you’ve upgraded your PC over the years and been left with a few hard drives knocking about then this is a brilliant little peripheral. Having upgraded my PC last year I not only had a spare SATA drive, I also had a nice new USB 3 port which hasn’t yet had any USB 3 peripherals plugged into it.

Setup of the Inateck dock is really easy and there’s no messing about, no software to installation, no tools required and no additional cables to buy as you get a power cable and USB 3 cable in the box. Just plug the Inateck dock into your USB drive (USB 2 or 3) and it’s ready to use. It has a power switch on the back which is brilliant if you are only going to use this occasionally, it means you can leave it all plugged in without it using power, just switch it on when ready.

Using it is also easy, just take your SATA drive and pop it into the dock, you’ll feel a small amount of resistance as it plugs in and then you hear the drive spin up. Couple of moments later and the PC will bring up the Autoplay ‘what do you want to do…’ box allowing you to use your SATA drives as you would a USB stick.

I’ve been using this with my Windows 7 PC, but as you’ll see from my video I’ve also tested it with my Android tablet, the Asus EeePad Transformer Prime TF201 . Again, there was nothing complicated to do, I just plugged it into the USB port, popped a drive in the dock and the tablet recognised it and treated it in the same way it would treat a USB stick.

The dock is designed to allow you to hot swap drives, you just pull out one drive and pop the second one in. This has a second advantage of ensuring the drive doesn’t overheat as it’s not enclosed.

 

Keep in mind there are two versions of the Inateck dock, the single drive version has been tested which is fine for using spare hard drives to transport a lot of files around. If you're looking to clone drives there is a two disk dock available with this ability.

Really can't fault this, it does exactly what you need it to and is a very reasonable price.


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