The Startech Dual SATA drive
SATDOCK22R is a dual hard drive dock with a little secret. On the outside it looks like a normal USB 2.0
docking station, perfect for accessing or cloning drives from a desktop. The USB 2.0 bus should be able to push or pull data at around 40MB/s. These docking stations are perfect for large organizations where you need to regularly re-image disk drives or upgrade smaller drives to larger disks.
Where the SATDOCK22R truly stands out is that having a connected PC is optional. With a simple AC adapter, the dock is able clone disk to disk using the 2 drive bays without a PC. Just place a source and destination drive in the
dual bays, and press a few buttons and the SATDOCK22R starts making byte for byte copies of the hard drive. This would allow you to keep a master image drive at the ready and not tax your computer with all the IO involved in drive imaging. Even better, the SATDOCK22R is able to run these standalone sessions at double the speed of the USB connected version. Startech claims 72MB/s transfers are possible. These are well suited to forensics, where chain of custody requires that evidence is touched as little as possible. This dock makes quick copies with a very lightweight tool. Carrying around a few extra blank hard drives might be a little awkward but those weigh a lot less than a full laptop plus accessories. These are available now for $170 at Startech's site.
Via Gadgeteer
By Ian Chiu on April 1st, 2010
