Inateck Dual Bay USB 3.0 HDD Docking Station with Offline Clone Review ( Model FD2002 )

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this product for free so that I could provide product feedback to the company and post a product review. I was not required to write a positive review and I do not rate products higher than they should have been. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's requirements.

I recently received an Inateck Dual Bay USB 3.0 HDD Docking Station ( model FD2002 ) for a product review.  I have done reviews of other adapters/docks, but this was my first dock that holds the drive in a vertical position and more importantly the first one with an offline clone capability.

The package included the instruction manual, the dock itself, a USB 3.0 cable and the power supply.  The dock came with a nifty plastic "dust cap" which you can keep over the dock when it is not in use.

Everything that comes with the dock, including a clear "dust cap" you can't really see in the picture (it is on the dock itself)

My first test was simple.  I inserted two 2.5" SATA drives, and they both showed up on my Windows 7 system.  Both drives showed up without any problems, and I used a few apps to ensure that I could see the S.M.A.R.T data from the drives and just made sure I could open each drive without any problems.

Next, I wanted to test the speeds so I booted into a Ubuntu live CD and ran a drive benchmark.  The drive average read, write and access times were within 1% of the Inateck FE2005 when using the same hard drive.

My final test was to try out the clone capability.  I took a 160GB hard drive (with Windows 7 Pro installed for one of the laptops) and inserted the 160GB and 200GB drive into the dock.After following the simple instructions in the manual, the process start and took around 40 minutes to finish.  When it was done, I put the 200GB drive back into the same laptop and it booted up with no problem.  I did notice that the partition sizes were the same as they were in the 160GB, so I had about 40GB unallocated.  You would need to add another partition, or use various tools to expand the existing partitions.

Here are the main points I noticed about this product:

Ease of use: Once you connect the cables, all you have to do is insert your SATA hard drive and hit the power button on the dock.  No drivers, nothing complicated.  If you plan to swap drives in and out, this dock is great.

Design: This dock has a clean and simple design.  The dock keeps the drive in a vertical position which in some situations may be ideal, however if you prefer Inateck does have docks that hold the drive in a horizontal position (but none that handle two drives and have clone capability).

Versatility: In addition to supporting two SATA drives (both 2.5" and 3.5") at the same time, this dock can also support offline clone capability.

The laptop I was using for my tests isn't USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) compatible so I wasn't able to determine how UASP impacted speed.

Bottom Line: If you are looking for a dual-bay USB dock, this is a great option and the clone feature gives the ability to handle hard drive upgrades and backups in a very easy way.

Link to Inateck FD2002 Product Page