3-Bay IDE/SATA Offline Clone Dock

Most drive work does not happen inside a case. A drive comes out of a dead machine, or off a shelf, and you need to read it, copy it, or find out whether it still spins — and mounting it in a working computer to do that is slow and awkward. This dock is for that job: drop the drive in, power it on, and it is there.

The dock has three bays, and they are not interchangeable — one is IDE and two are SATA, which is worth knowing before you order:

• Top bay — IDE, for 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives
• Middle bay — SATA, for 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives
• Bottom bay — SATA, for 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives

The IDE bay is the reason to own one of these. Drives from that era are the ones most likely to be sitting in a drawer waiting to be read, and most modern docks dropped the interface years ago.

Offline cloning, with no computer

The two upper bays are marked Master B and Master C; the lower bay is marked SON A. Cloning runs from either Master bay (B or C) to the SON bay (A) with nothing else connected — press and hold the copy button and a 25% / 50% / 75% / 100% progress bar on the front tracks it. The source drive must be equal to or smaller than the target. The manufacturer rates copying at 70-100 MB/s depending on the drives used.

Cloning only runs in that direction. It is not an any-bay-to-any-bay copier, and it clones one drive to one drive.

Connected to a computer

• USB 3.0 to the host, rated up to 5 Gbps
• Two drives can be accessed at the same time
• Hot swap and tool-free insertion — nothing to screw down, nothing to open
• Two USB 2.0 ports on the front, for a mouse, a keyboard or a stick
• Card reader taking M2, MS, TF, XD, CF and SD cards

• The dock
• A 12 V mains power adapter with a US plug
• A USB 3.0 data cable
• A manual

Drive support

• 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch IDE
• 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA, including SATA I, II and III
• Mechanical drives and SSDs