Inateck FD2002 HDD Docking and Cloning Station Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The Inateck FD2002 Dual SATA HDD Docking Station with Offline Clone Function is cheaper than you might think. Amazon has them in stock all around the world and UK readers can get it for £37.99, Germans can get it for €39.99 and US readers will have to pay $39.99.

Overview

The Inateck FD2002 isn’t just an easy to use dual docking station with USB 3 UASP support, it also brings along the very useful cloning function. Cloning software can be a real pain to use and often requires you to boot out of your normal operating system and into a special created USB drive. All that is history when you get yourself an FD2002 Docking and Cloning station. And the best of all is that it only takes the press of a button and some patience.

The tiny footprint of the unit allows you to have it around without it getting in the way of other things on your desktop. It’s however still big enough for a stable performance, even when loaded with as heavy drives as my WD RED 6TB are.

The design is simplistic as with all Inateck products, something that I really like. Gadgets need to work and otherwise blend in to be forgotten when not in use. It’s simple, and it’s effective.

I didn’t have any compatibility trouble at all with this docking station, it accepted any disk I presented to it. From SSDs to HDDs and SSHDs. The box says that it’s compatible up to 4TB, but it also supports 6TB and most likely also 8TB and bigger drives. Rule of thumb, if 3TB or above is supported, then you can use any available drive.

You should pay attention to where you place it when using it for longer periods of time. Depending on what drives you use, they may run very hot after some time. There isn’t any cooling solution in a top-loader such as this, and you wouldn’t want your drives to take any damage.

The performance of the FD2002 was great when loaded with SSD drives. We saw UASP supported speeds up to 440MB/s while reading and barely any performance loss when writing, besides the natural USB throttling in access times.

Pros:

• USB 3.0 with UASP support for up to 440MB/s
• Dual Docking
• Offline Cloning function, at full speed
• More power than needed for more stable performance
• Variety of drive protections in place

Neutral:

• Would have loved to have an eSATA connection on it

“The Inateck FD2002 Dual Docking and Cloning station is just perfect for anyone that switches drives a lot or just wants to be able to attach drives the easiest way possible. The Offline Cloning function works like a charm and creates an even more valuable tool to have at your disposal.”

Thanks to Inateck for providing this review sample