Syba SY-ENC50091 USB 3.0 Dual Bay SATA HDD Docking Station

Pros: does not take much space in a trash bin

Cons: chokes on files larger than ~ 200 mb, just hangs and needs to be powered off and on, but still does not complete the copy, extremely slow. much slower than my 10 years old USB 2.0 enclosure. I got it for $15 not worth the trouble to return. Will need to stick with a reputable brand next time.

Pros: Small Form factor is the only plus

Cons: This is my third ENC50091 USB 3.0 HDD Docking Station and will also be the last Syba product. This docking station has corrupted the MFT drive tables twice on both a very small 160GB and a large 4TB drive. Same issues with both, "unrecognized file system, do you want to format the drive? NO!" Both times where it corrupted the drives has been the exact same issue. Also, a numerous times the docking station will fail to recognize the inserted drive. My other BlacX Thermaltake docking stations with 100's of hours on them have been flawless with data integrity. Very disappointing from Syba. My first Syba ENC50091 has been flawless thus far.

Overall Review: No, This is one docking station that I would stay to avoid at all costs to to the frequency of destroying your data without notice. If a Firmware update could be installed that would fix these issues, with 100% certainty that it WON'T corrupt the data, then it would be an OK product, but reliable or trustworthy it is not.

Pros: Worked nicely, while it lasted.

Cons: Base unit failed after only a few months-totally dead, and I verified the AC adapter was still producing 12V. And most of that time it wasn't even powered up. Syba issued RMA but insists: "Please note that customer will pay the shipping for return items". That means I have to pay as much in RMA shipping as the thing cost in the first place. WARNING: If you see this on sale for what looks like a great price, it is because it is CHEAP JUNK and they KNOW their so-called warranty won't be needed because of their shipping policy. DO NOT BUY SYBA, and if you do DO NOT ASSUME THEIR WARRANTY IS USEFUL.

Overall Review: I explained to them their RMA shipping policy makes the warranty worthless. Not even the courtesy of a reply, TOTAL CRICKETS. Completely unethical company. Shame on them. I would actually rate them ZERO (or negative) eggs if I could.

Pros: Cloned one hard drive without a hitch.

Cons: Next time I plugged it in to get some data off an hold hard drive, it worked for about 2 minutes, then there was a pop, and some electronic smoke odor.

Overall Review: Fire hazard

Pros: I got it for $5 on black Friday

Cons: I plug in a drive, start copying over large files at 90 MB/s, and within 10 seconds it just freezes. 0 bytes/sec transfer rate, stuck forever. Have to power off the unit. Reads work fine, just large writes do not. I then RMA'd the unit and the one they sent me has the exact same issue. It's probably a bug in the chipset. I had a stroke of inspiration and tried plugging it into a USB 2.0 port, and after about 30 seconds of testing it seems to be able to write to drives without issue. So I guess maybe it's usable as a USB 2.0 dock, which for $5 I'm not gonna go through another RMA for.

Overall Review: I almost threw away two of my hard drives due to freezing before I realized the dock was the problem. (They work fine in my other dock from a different brand).

Pros: Worked OK. Easy to install drives

Cons: Would not stay powered on with 2 WD Blue 1TB drives. OK with WD Green or Green and Blue Long pauses (2-4 seconds) every 5-10 seconds on large file copies. Saw there was a V2 Firmware upgrade on SYBA website so downloaded that; made backup of current FW and updated FW. Didn't solve delays so tried to reinstall old, saved, firmware - this failed. tried multiple times then update finally said passed but unit not functional. Now have 75% light flashing (others on solid). Unit not recognized by Win7 OS. The SYBA has been 'bricked'. SYBA website had Tech Support help form on website so I filled it in detailing all that happened. That was 7 days ago. No response from SYBA. Bad/incomplete info on website as to firmware versions.

Overall Review: If it works OK and slight delays between copying blocks of large files do not bother you it's probably OK for you just do not try to update the firmware. And it the constantly on clone lights (blue LED's for 25%, 50%, 75% & 100%) will not bother you (tape them over if it bothers you) then it will probably work for you. For my brothers I'll be getting them the Sabrent with fan. That's 4 more units I will not be buying from SYBA mainly because of bad (as in not responsive) Customer Support (based on my 17 years as Senior Technical Support Engineer at MTS).

Pros: Good Idea

Cons: I attempted to clone a hard drive and it killed the target drive. Loud Clicks, scratching, pops. Totally dead and was no longer visible by the laptop (Windows 7). The drive worked perfectly just minutes before. I will not be using it again.

Overall Review: I would not recommend this to anyone.

Pros: drives fits the slot perfectly and every easy operation

Cons: provided docking station SW doesn't work I had to download aftermarket clone SW (Reflect from Macrium Software), its free and works just fine.

Overall Review: good product for the price.