Hard drives make perfect data storage devices to store and retrieve masses of data. Nothing beats a good old hard drive when it comes to storage capacity, not even memory sticks because you can get a whopping 12TB in a single hard drive!
Normally, the only way to access a hard drive is when it is connected to the motherboard of a PC but with a caddie semi-enclosure like the StarTech USB 3.0 docking station you can transform both internal SATA hard drives and solid state drives into external, removal data storage devices.
The StarTech USB 3.0 docking station lets you backup data quickly and being dual drive means you can even get more use out of it to clone your drives, transfer data from one drive to the other and benchmark multiple hard drives.
The StarTech USB 3.0 docking station has a simple design. On the back, you find the USB 3.0 B female port and power socket, while on top you find the drive slots, two led buttons and two ejection buttons.
The StarTech SATA docking station is designed to make 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA hard drives (HHD) or solid-state drives (SSD) plug-and-play with your computer, connecting via the included USB 3.0 A male to USB 3.0 B male cable.
While you can use a computer or laptop with USB 3.0 or USB 2.0 ports, you really want to use USB 3.0 because it offers 5 Gigabits per second transfer rates, while USB 2.0 can only do 480 Megabits per second.
Other than that, StarTech's USB3.0 dual drive dock works with all operating systems, including macOS 9, macOS 10, Chrome OS, and Linux. If you are using a Windows computer, the drive dock is compatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 (32-bit and 64-bit versions).
If your computer is running Windows 8, Mac OSX (10.8 or above), or Linux, you will love this docking station even more because the USB3.0 interface is integrated with UASP which gives you around double faster read speed and write speed than USB 3.0 alone which uses the BOT (Bulk Only Transport) protocol.
Once hooked up to the computer, the StartTech SATA docking station is automatically detected and initialized without having to install any drivers. With that said, you may have to manually initialize the drive in order for your computer to recognize the docking station. To do this, simply right click on "computer" and select "Manage" to bring up the Computer Management dialog.
From the Computer Management window, select Disk Management from the left window panel and create a Master Boot Record (MBR) disk or GUID Partition Table (GPT) disk in order to initially the disk. Once initialized, locate the Disk that says it is “Unallocated”, right-click “Unallocated” and select “New Partition” to format the drive.
As mentioned earlier, the StarTech docking station features two male SATA 15-pin power connector   and 7-pin data connector inside the drive slots to connect two female SATA drives.
Each drive slot can be turned on independently of the other thanks to individual power buttons which integrate two leds each to indicate activity (red led) and power (blue led).
Never remove the drive from the docking station while the red led is flashing, as it will corrupt your drive. If you are using a Windows computer be sure to select the “Safely remove Hardware and Eject Media” icon, located in the taskbar of your desktop and wait for the message indicating that it is now safe to remove the device.
If you are using MacOS 10, the procedure to safely disconnect is very different. You will need close any windows listing the contents of your removable drive and click on the USB storage icon on the desktop, and drag it to the Trash Can icon on the desktop. Allow 5 seconds before physically removing the drive from the docking station.
Alongside the drive slots, you also get two eject buttons that help you to eject the drives  without having to pull them out yourself.
You get a USB 3.0 cable, a universal power adapter with world travel leaders, including (North America, Japan, Europe, United Kingdom, UK, Australia and New Zealand
If you happen to have IDE SATA drives (3.5-inch or 2.5-inch) with 40-pin or 44-pin, you can still use the StarTech docking station by using a SATA to IDE adapter