Very well-made docking station for 2.5 and 3.5 inch hard drives and SSD's. Start-up and use without any problems.

I want you / you report here about my experience with the Avantek USB 3.0 Docking Station.
The aim of such a docking station is the connection of 3.5 and 2.5 inch SATA hard drives / SSD's to your PC using the USB 3.0 interface without having to install the drives / SSD's, or to use an external enclosure.

The Avantek dock is delivered in a box with a USB 3.0 connection cable of 1 meter length, a compact AC adapter with about 1.1 meters of cable length and a neat understandable Quick Guide in German and English.
The power plug is distinguished by its narrow width and height suitable for multiple plugs.

The docking station is 13.5cm wide, 5.5cm deep and well 6.5 cm high and weighs around 400 grams.

The material used is black matte plastic, which I welcome.
In my view, significantly better than the just as hip fingerprint and scratch-prone glossy plastic.

The docking station provides a common slot for 2.5 or 3.5 inch hard drives.
The 2.5-inch bay is open, the 3.5 inch tray is available through a fold-away protective cover when inserting the hard drives.

The engagement and the leadership of hard drives works very well and the plates are secure.
So there is little danger cancel the SATA connector.
Nevertheless, one should just be very careful when inserting and removing the respective plate.

Theoretically, you can insert or remove the plate (hot swap) during operation.
But I strongly advise against because you handled it were in the dark with live parts.
Please take the time, the plate is switched off or expand before it even takes damage through carelessness.

On the front is a status display with an integrated touch panel.
So you can turn the machine on and off and read the status
Blue lights is a USB 3.0 connection, white glow of a USB 2.0 connection.
Disk accesses will be signaled by a flashing LED.

On the back is a USB attached 3.0 port for connection to PC and power supply.

After starting my computer with Windows 7 Ultimate, the docking station has been detected directly.
It was necessary, no additional driver installation.
The used 3.5-inch hard drive WD Red 5TB and a Seagate Momentus 2.5-inch hard drive with 500GB were incorporated after switching on the docking station immediately.

Copying my system SSD on the WD Red 5TB ran with about 130 MB / s and on the Seagate with about 75 MB / s in each case also some smaller files existed.
This corresponds to the respective technical possibilities of the two plates.
Thus, the docking station decelerates the plates from under any circumstances.

According to the manual, the plates should go to "sleep" after 10 minutes.
For me this hard disk standby mode works very reliably.
Can configure / change to the timeout, however, not as I know it, for example, from small software tools from other vendors ago.

All in all, I recommend this product to 100%.
The docking station works simple and effective and the price-performance ratio is good.
For that I am happy to give the full 5 stars.

I hope this review could assist you in your buying decision ...