Received the product and a new hard drive, set up, partitioned and formatted. When doing a data transfer from my overtaxed drives to the new one, the transfer will freeze (though the monitor and mouse are fine, unlike the other reported issue) for fifteen seconds or so until I hear the new drive spin up again and the transfer continues. This is happening every few minutes.
Hi!
Thanks for posting and sorry to hear you’ve been having problems with our U3 SATA Docking Station!
We’ll get you up and running!
* Is this happening on Windows or on a Mac?
* Are you using USB 2.0 or 3.0 ?
Once we have this information we can suggest next steps!
Regards,
Lampros
Of course- I should have provided that much from the get-go. Windows 7. Pretty sure it’s USB 2.0, but that might have been an upgrade that slipped by me- where can one check?
Hi!
Thanks for that information!
The easiest way to check is the USB cable you are using. If it’s ends are blue and it’s thicker, then it’s a USB 3.0 cable. Also have a look at our photo of the package contents here.
The cable on the bottom right is the USB 3.0 cable.
* Do you have a USB 3.0 card that you are using with that cable?
* After the transfer freezes does the copy continue normally, or are you getting an error?
* What is the make and model of your Win 7 machine?
Once we have this information we can suggest next steps!
Thanks for your patience while we’re troubleshooting this issue!
Regards,
Lampros
I was originally using the USB 2.0 cable, as that looked familiar, but, seeing that I could also use the other cable that you pointed out, I tried that. I got no complaints from Windows and the drive came up, so I’m guessing I have USB 3.0.
I am, however, now seeing more hesitations from the drive when copying data over to it.
I may have spoken too soon. I’ve now been able to copy over 2GB without any hang-ups. Guess I was using the wrong cable. Hopefully this is the last you’ll hear of it. Thanks!
Thanks for that information!
If you don’t get any error from Windows and you can see the transfer freezing but then continuing, that can be a number of possible things:
a) Your source drive is busy and cannot send data fast enough
b) There are programs running in the background slowing down the transfer (most typically anti-virus software)
If this persists, we would recommend to double check if all the cables are tightly connected - including the power adapter. If this happens occasionally and only for a few seconds and you don’t see error messages then it’s probably just the drives trying to catch up with each other.
If however this gets worse, we can do some more in-depth investigation to see what’s the root cause of the delays you are seeing.
No matter what, let us know and we’ll do our best to help you!
Regards,
Lampros
Well, although it’s much less frequent now, I’m still getting the problem. Your two suggestions as to cause I think are not the problem, as I hear the drive spin up when it recovers from the hiatus and when it is hanging, I can’t access the drive at all. The cables feel solid. I’ve got it plugged into a hub, I’ll try moving it to a port of the computer itself and see if that makes any difference.
Thanks for the assistance. I do hope we can get this resolved so I don’t have to bother with returning it to Amazon and ordering a competing product.
Hi!
It sounds like you’ve hit a bad unit. Sorry about that 
Please e-mail us at support@plugable.com and include the following:
a) Your Amazon order ID
b) The serial number of the device (to be found under the device on a sticker)
c) Your current valid address
and we’ll send a replacement unit to you as soon as possible!
Thank you for your patience through this process!
Regards,
Lampros