Product ID: UNIDUPDOCK
The UNIDUPDOCK Universal SATA/IDE Dual Hard Drive Duplicator functions as both a convenient solid state (SSD) or hard drive (HDD) copying/imaging solution or an external SATA/IDE SSD or HDD docking station for 2.5in or 3.5in drives (SATA, SATA II, SATA III).
Providing quick, yet complete hard drive cloning functionality, this universal dock can operate as a standalone HDD duplicator with no connection to a host computer, delivering an exact 1 to 1 clone of the target hard drive including partition and boot sector information, the Host Protected Area (HPA) as well as user data at a copy rate of 72 MB/sec. A built in LCD screen then allows for tracking the duplication progress , as well as reporting errors on the drives.
Supporting both IDE and SATA, this universal duplicator dock enables duplication from SATA to SATA, IDE to SATA or SATA to IDE, and IDE to IDE, as long as the source drive does not exceed the size of the destination drive. Or the docking station can even be used to quickly erase hard drives, for reuse in the future.
Functioning as a universal IDE and SATA HDD docking station, the hard drive duplicator can be connected to a computer through USB with support for simple plug-and-play installation, allowing users to access hard drive contents without having to mount in an external drive enclosure or open the computer case for conventional drive installation. Large capacity drives (tested with up to 4TB 3.5" and 1TB 2.5" drives per bay) can be used to greatly enhance your computer's storage/backup capabilities.
Contained in a small form factor design that makes it a suitable addition to desktop and laptop operating environments, this hard drive duplicator/external HDD docking station is a versatile storage and hard drive cloning utility that also features a host of other built in utilities that are accessible via a built in menu system.
Menu Options:
Warranty Information | Warranty | 2 Years |
---|---|---|
Connector(s) | 2 - Drive Connectors | IDE (40 Pin, EIDE/PATA) |
SATA Data & Power Combo (7+15 pin) | ||
LP4 (4 pin; Large Drive Power) | ||
1 - Host Connectors | USB B (4 pin) | |
Environmental | Operating Temperature | 5°C to 80°C (41°F to 176°F) |
Storage Temperature | -40°C to 70°C (-40°F to 158°F) | |
Humidity | 90% RH | |
Hardware | Interface | USB 2.0 |
Number of Drives | 2 | |
Drive Size | 2.5in & 3.5in | |
Compatible Drive Types | SATA & IDE | |
Chipset ID | ACARD - ARC286 | |
Packaging Information | Package Height | 71,0 mm [2,8 in] |
Package Length | 29,2 cm [11,5 in] | |
Shipping (Package) Weight | 854,0 g [30,1 oz] | |
Package Width | 19,3 cm [7,6 in] | |
Performance | Maximum Data Transfer Rate | 480Mbps |
Type and Rate | USB 2.0 - 480 Mbit/s | |
Supported RAID Modes | BIG (Spanning or Concatenation) | |
RAID 1 (Mirrored Disks) | ||
RAID 0 (Striped Disks) | ||
JBOD - (Just a Bunch of Disks) | ||
Duplication Modes | Sector by Sector (Whole Drive) | |
Erase Modes | Quick Erase | |
Max Drive Capacity | Currently tested with up to 4TB 5400 RPM hard drives per bay (8TB total) and 1TB 5400 RPM 2.5" hard drives (2TB total) | |
Duplication Speed | 4.2GBpm | |
Insertion Rating | 15,000 Cycles | |
Physical Characteristics | Weight of Product | 236,0 g [8,3 oz] |
Color | Black | |
Material | Plastic | |
Product Length | 15,1 cm [5,9 in] | |
Product Width | 11,0 cm [4,3 in] | |
Product Height | 27,0 mm [1,1 in] | |
Power | Power Source | AC Adapter Included |
Input Voltage | 100 - 240 AC | |
Output Voltage | 12/5V DC | |
Output Current | 3A | |
Power Consumption (In Watts) | 36 | |
Software | OS Compatibility | OS independent; No software or drivers required |
Special Notes / Requirements | Note | For duplication, the destination drive must be of equal or greater capacity than the source drive. |
What's in the Box | 1 - Included in Package | Universal HDD Duplicator |
USB 2.0 A B Cable | ||
2 - Included in Package | 40 to 44 pin adapters | |
LP4 to LP4 Cables | ||
IDE 40 to 40 pin Cables | ||
3 - Included in Package | Power Cord (NA/UK/EU) | |
1 - Included in Package | Universal power adapter: comes ready for NA/EU/UK only when you buy in NA/EU/UK; comes ready for Australia and New Zealand only when you buy in Australia and New Zealand | |
Instruction Manual |
Use your 2.5in or 3.5in IDE hard drives in a SATA HDD Docking Station
Provide protection against shocks/impacts to a 2.5in hard drive
Connect a 5V or 3.3V Micro SATA hard drive to a standard SATA controller and SATA power supply connection
Provide protection against shocks/impacts to a 3.5in hard drive
We are always ready to assist you with any questions you may have.
Live Chat (opens in new window)We are always ready to assist you with any questions you may have.
Live Chat (opens in new window)Note: If you are using an IDE hard drive 1 Gigabyte in size or smaller, refer to the following FAQ: http://www.startech.com/faq/hard_drive_accessories_minimum_ide_hard_drive_size
If you are unable to detect your IDE (PATA) drive using a StarTech.com product, you may need to change the jumper settings on your drive. The jumpers switch the drive between Master, Slave, and Cable Select for most drives. A jumper is a small plastic piece that slides on top of two pins to electrically short them together.
When it does not mention what IDE drive configuration is required or if there is only one drive in the setup, the drive should be configured as Master. If Master is not working, try using the drive in Cable Select.
There is no standard position for the jumpers on IDE drives. On some drives, the jumper diagram is on the label that is on the top of the drive. On other drives, there are markings on the circuit board for CS, MA, and SL, which means a jumper shorts the pins vertically in that position. For more information, refer to the documentation provided by the manufacturer.
When you troubleshoot issues with a hard drive dock or duplicator, there are some quick tests that you can complete to rule out potential problems. You can test to make sure that the following components are working correctly and are not the source of the issue:
To test your setup components, try the following:
When you test the hard drive and hard drive dock or duplicator, it is recommended that you do the following:
Note: For a hard drive duplicator you may need to switch the device to PC mode (if available).
Note: Formatting a hard drive erases all of the data on it. Make sure that you back up all of your data before you reformat the hard drive.
Note: A formatted hard drive will not show up in Computer or My Computer until it has a drive letter assigned to it.
This docking station allows the hard drive to enforce its own power state, as opposed to enforcing a power state that keeps the hard drive active at all times. Since most newer hard drives have low-power energy conservation modes, this will cause the hard drive to enter an idle state if it is not used for a certain amount of time.
You do not need to format your target hard drive before you begin to duplicate it, because the target hard drive is automatically overwritten during the duplication process.
The hard drive duplicator copies the exact partition from the source drive to the target drive. Since it is required that you use a target drive that is equal or larger in size than the source drive a portion of the target drive appears as free space. You can append free space to the live partition on the target drive so that the full size of the drive can be utilized.
Note: A partition cannot be extended on an operating system drive that is in use. You must extend the partition when it not being used by the operating system, and ideally when it is still connected to the duplicator.
Note: Do not extend a System Reserved partition. Only extend the primary partition, which is typically the largest in size and formatted with NTFS or FAT32.
After you have successfully duplicated a drive and the target drive is still connected to your computer system (for example, through the duplicator), complete the following:
The primary partition on the drive now uses the entire drive area.
You can use the UNIDUPDOCK to skip bad sectors on a hard drive. For more information, visit the following FAQ: http://www.startech.com/ca/faq/hard_drive_duplicators_failing_drives.
To skip possible bad sectors with the UNIDUPDOCK, you need to enable Read Error Skip. By default, Read Error Skip is disabled.
To enable Read Error Skip, complete the following:
Turn on the UNIDUPDOCK.
Navigate to Copy HDD and press and hold ESC until Adv Setup appears.
Navigate to Read Error Skip and press ENT.
Press the up arrow button until On Skip Sector appears.
Press ESC.
Press the down arrow button until Copy HDD appears on the screen.
StarTech.com hard drive duplicators only read from the source drive and only write to the target drives while in standalone duplication mode . A duplication that fails or halts will not cause a problem with the source drive.
You can use this device to duplicate an internal hard drive with the stand alone duplicator function if you remove the hard drive from the computer and connect it directly to this device.
In order to rebuild a RAID array, you need to replace a physical drive with an identical drive on the same RAID controller. Although standard RAID levels are generally agreed upon throughout the industry, the implementation varies between manufacturers. RAID arrays are typically not accessible when they are moved to another controller, and data may be unrecoverable if the drives are out of order or have been formatted or accessed by another RAID controller.
If a RAID controller has failed, you should get the exact same model of RAID controller.
Note: If a drive or drives were damaged, it is possible that the RAID array may be permanently unrecoverable.
RAID should not be considered a replacement for backing up your data. If critical data is going onto a RAID array, you should back up the data on another physical drive or logical set of drives.
With the following RAID modes, recovery is possible using the same StarTech.com product. Refer to the following table for the appropriate method to use to recover your RAID array.
RAID mode | Max # of failed drives | Procedure |
RAID 1 | Only one drive is needed for recovery. |
The array will rebuild and is accessible during the rebuilding process. |
RAID 3 | Single drive failure will rebuild. |
Note: Do not change the order of the drives.
|
RAID 5 | Single drive failure will rebuild. |
Note: Do not change the order of the drives.
|
RAID 10 | Only one drive in a mirrored set can fail. |
Note: Do not change the order of the drives.
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To confirm that the Mac OS detects your USB device, complete the following:
You may need to refresh the System Information page after you plug in your device. To do so, press Command + R with the System Information page open.
Your USB device is listed according to the name of the chipset. To determine the name of the chipset of your USB device, navigate to www.StarTech.com and look on the Technical Specifications tab for your product.
Note: For more information on how to detect an IDE hard drive, visit http://www.startech.com/faq/hard_drive_accessories_ide_detection.
Older IDE drives are not supported by current StarTech.com products. Typically, these drives were made earlier than the mid-to-late 1990s and are smaller than 1 Gigabyte in size.
There are a number of reasons that older IDE drives may not be detected, including the following:
The drive uses PIO (Programmed Input/Output) mode and not DMA (Direct Memory Access).
The drive is non-ATA or is using an ATA mode that predates the chipset's compatibility (usually older than ATA-4).
The sector size is not 512 bytes.
Unfortunately there is no workaround in these situations. An older system or an older IDE controller card must be used to access older IDE drives.
StarTech.com hard drive and flash drive duplicators perform a sector by sector copy, which means that the target drive must be the exact same size (down to the sector) or larger than the hard drive or flash drive that is being copied. During a sector by sector copy, each individual sector is copied over to the target drive, regardless of whether or not any data is present. A 500 GB hard drive with 50 GB of data on it will take the same amount of time to copy as a 500 GB hard drive with 450 GB of data on it.
If you have two hard drives or flash drives that are listed as the same size but are different makes or models, you need to check how large both drives are down to the sector to ensure that the target drive is the exact same size or larger.
Solid-state drives (SSDs) use SATA connectors to access power and transfer data. Any duplicator that can copy to or from SATA hard drives will work with a StarTech.com duplicator.
Note: If you use a dock to duplicate SSDs, keep in mind that the StarTech.com disk duplicators execute a sector by sector read and write. SSDs are rated by a number of reads and writes. Repeated duplication and sector by sector reads and writes of SSDs can reduce the life cycle of the drive.
Software-level encryption on the drive poses no issue to StarTech.com duplicators, as the duplicators copy encrypted data sector by sector over to the new drive.
Hardware-level encryption or BIOS level hard drive locks cause the duplication to halt and fail, as the drive is unable to read or write the sectors that are encrypted.
Duplication of Hidden Protected Area (HPA) Partitions or Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) cause the duplicator to halt and fail, as the drive cannot read and write the protected partitions on the drive.
Note: Our UNIDUPDOCK, SATDOCK22RE and SATDOCK4U3RE do include the ability to copy HPA partitions, but the duplication is still dependent on how the HPA partition is written to the hard drive, whether or not it is encrypted and how it is encrypted.
StarTech.com duplicators were not designed to recover failing or damaged drives. If the duplicator encounters a corrupt or unreadable sector, the duplication halts and fails. If the source drive has bad sectors, use the Read Error Skip feature if your model of duplicator has it; however, if there are too many errors, it may still halt and fail even with this feature. If this happens, you will need third-party recovery software or custom-built recovery hardware to copy from a failing or damaged drive.
To determine if your hard drive will work in this device, on the product page, click the Technical Specifications tab, and do the following:
Note: Not all StarTech.com devices support each of the RAID modes described below. For more information on the RAID modes that your device supports, refer to the manual or the StarTech.com product page.
Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) is a virtual disk technology that combines multiple physical drives into one unit. RAID can create redundancy, improve performance, or do both.
RAID should not be considered a replacement for backing up your data. If critical data is going onto a RAID array, it should be backed up to another physical drive or logical set of drives.
The following are terms that are normally used in connection with RAID:
Different RAID levels exist for different application requirements.
Refer to the following table for the list of RAID modes offered by some StarTech.com products:
RAID mode | Description | Operation | Advantages | Disadvantages | Recovery |
RAID 0 | Striped disks | Data is split evenly between two or more disks. | Large size and the fastest speed. | No redundancy. | If one or more drives fails, this results in array failure. |
RAID 1 | Mirrored disks | Two or more drives have identical data on them. | A single drive failure will not result in data loss. | Speed and size is limited by the slowest and smallest disk. | Only one drive is needed for recovery. |
RAID 3 | Striped set with dedicated parity | Data is split evenly between two or more disks, plus a dedicated drive for parity storage. | High speeds for sequential read/write operations. | Poor performance for multiple simultaneous instructions. | A single drive failure will rebuild. |
RAID 5 | Striped disks with distributed parity | Data is split evenly between three or more disks. Parity is split between disks. | Large size, fast speed, and redundancy. | The total array size is reduced by parity. | A single drive failure will rebuild. |
RAID 10 | 1+0; Striped set of Mirrored Subset | Four or more drives are made into two mirrors that are striped. | Larger size and higher speed than RAID-1, and more redundancy than RAID-0. | No parity. | Only one drive in a mirrored set can fail. |
JBOD | Just a Bunch Of Disks | Any number of drives are accessed independently by the operating system. | Software RAID modes can be used. | Hardware RAID may have better performance. | N/A |
Big | Spanning or Concatenation | Data is written on one drive until it is full, and then the next drive(s) until it or they are full. | Creates a very large and simple array. |
No redundancy. |
N/A |
Clone | RAID 1 + Spare |
Two drives have identical data, plus one drive is used for rebuilding in case of a primary array failure. |
Seamless operation when one drive fails in a RAID-1 array. | Spare drive is not accessible to the user. | Only one drive is needed for recovery. |
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