Final Thoughts
I found the dock very easy to set up and use, and apart from my comment about the IDE ribbon I had no issues at all.
StarTech claim a copy rate of 72 MB/sec, where as I only managed to achieve around 50 MB/sec, but that could certainly be down to the type, size and speed of the drives I was using for the testing.
Being able to use it as a dock as well is quite useful – just one less thing you need after the duplication.
I also liked that this dock supported IDE and SATA drives and came with everything you needed to use both or either. I have used devices in the past that were only SATA or only IDE and then you needed cables as well, and it can be a real pain, so having an all-in-one type device was good.
Having it standalone and not needing to be connected to a PC to use it also was a good move.
You might be asking yourself why you would need a disk duplicator? Well there could be many reasons….. you might want to have a complete copy of a drive or drives to store offsite for backup reasons. You might do a lot of testing of software and want a copy of the drive to go back to when you are finished. There are many reasons, and everyone will probably have a different one.
Cost wise, in the US it retails for around $245.99 and in the UK for around £199.99 (plus VAT at 20%). I have seen it on Ebuyer for £140, so as usual look around for a good deal.
If you plan on doing a lot of drive duplication then this is worth the money. However at this price, if you don’t think you will be doing a lot then you might want to consider a software duplication option, along with the right cables and connectors for your drives.
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