strange that my problem has apparently so far no one else saw: Modern plates usually have a physical sector size of 4096 bytes, but offer to host a logical sector size of 512 bytes (because many operating systems can only deal with it). This Dockinstation returns on such panels for the physical and the logical sector size of 4096 bytes. Thus, a plate has in this dock less by a factor of 8 blocks than any other that I know of (including another ICY BOX) or if you connect the drive directly to a SATA port. This means that not even the partition tables can be read correctly. That is probably the reason of the berichtetet prompts to format the disk. The problem does not occur when either the plates always operates only on this dock, or if you have disks that have logical and phsyikalisch a block size of 512 bytes. I have a very old 500GB / 3.5 "drive that works so. To me that is part bestenfals a chic paperweight.