need more information on USB 3.0 SATA hard drive dock

1

You should include more information on your detail product page, for the sake of transparency.

  1. What type of cable connection is used for the Plugable USB3-SATA-UASP1 Lay Flat Docking Station? Is it a USB 3.0 B-Type or is it USB micro B? There’s no detail images of the back of the device.

  2. More images of the device.

  3. Is the power button on the device mechanical power button? In other words, once it’s off, it stays off. If the device is turned off, and then encounters a USB power on event (like when the computer powers on) will it turn itself on?

  4. Does the hard drive dock turn off the hard drive after idle time?

  5. Does the dock pull the drive periodically if there’s no I/O access. If I’m using a hard drive that has power saving features (like the WD Green drives), will the dock’s periodic polling negate these power saving features on the hard drive.

2

Hi Eric-

Thanks for your questions!

We do our best to provide as much detail on the listings as we can, however length restrictions make this a area where prioritizing information is necessary. Thanks for your input on details you’re interested in- we’ll look at adding some further details on these topics where we can and appreciate the input.

  1. What type of cable connection is used for the Plugable USB3-SATA-UASP1 Lay Flat Docking Station? Is it a USB 3.0 B-Type or is it USB micro B? There’s no detail images of the back of the device.

It’s a standard full size USB 3.0 A/B cable, with the same connections as this one:
http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/usb…

  1. More images of the device.

Thanks for the input- we’ll get more photos up ASAP.

  1. Is the power button on the device mechanical power button? In other words, once it’s off, it stays off. If the device is turned off, and then encounters a USB power on event (like when the computer powers on) will it turn itself on?

Yes, it is a mechanical on/off switch. Off is off, no action from the host will change this.

  1. Does the hard drive dock turn off the hard drive after idle time?

No: this avoids any potential issues with resuming from sleep and subsequent missed backups/recordings/etc.

We understand this is important to many users, and while we are looking into releasing a firmware that has disks power down on the dock/drive when the system sleeps and/or when the safely remove/eject command, however we don’t want to risk the reliability/stability of the connection to implement this, so progress can be slow, and as a result we can’t promise a timeframe on this potential update.

  1. Does the dock pull the drive periodically if there’s no I/O access. If I’m using a hard drive that has power saving features (like the WD Green drives), will the dock’s periodic polling negate these power saving features on the hard drive.

From what I can tell, the power saving from the Green drives come primarily from variable rotational speed and parking the heads, not from actually spinning down/sleeping the drive. Please let me know if you have evidence otherwise, I haven’t found WD documentation here overly informative, and have been tracking this personally for years http://techreport.com/review/15769/we….

Here is the best/most recent resource I can find from WD on the topic (Jan 2013): http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library…

From what I can tell, the power savings from variable rotational speed and head parking would also be present, however again the sparse details from WD on the topic make me a little uncertain here.

I hope these details help, but please let us know if you still have any questions!

Best wishes-

Jeff Everett
MCITP Enterprise Support Technician
Plugable Technologies