| INEO I-NA321U PLUS Docking Station |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Storage | |
| Written by Aidan Moore | |
| Tuesday, 26 February 2013 | |
INEO I-NA321U PLUS Docking Station Review
Manufacturer: Ineo Technology Inc. Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by Ineo. An external hard drive docking station is a bit of a niche product. Typically, a single-bay docking station can be used to backup and duplicate data from a drive inside your PC. This arrangement can be useful if you require offsite storage for your data, or if you are sharing the large amount of data with another machine. However, creating a true duplicate drive image requires some form of third-party software and usually requires some detailed knowledge of hard drive partitioning.
A dual-bay docking station such as the I-NA321U PLUS is much more versatile, providing the ability to duplicate hard drives without access to the inside of your PC. The I-NA321U PLUS All of this convenience can be compromised if the docking station has a very slow data transfer rate. A slow interface can impact the time to duplicate hard drives in the standalone mode, as well the time needed to transfer data from the PC to the external hard drives. In this article, Benchmark Reviews will take a closer look at the performance of this new docking station, as well as the usability of the single button copy feature. 
INEO I-NA321U PLUS FeaturesSource: ineotechusa.com
I-NA321U PLUS series is an intelligent solution for your bare drives. It supports both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA Hard Disk Drives. I-NA321U PLUS series makes it convenient to install your HDDs and it supports Super Speed USB 3.0 for your extreme Data transfer and backup. It makes file exchange even easier than you can imagine, you can just move data between your bare drives with I-NA321U PLUS series. INEO I-NA321U PLUS SpecificationsSource: ineotechusa.com
Closer Look: INEO I-NA321U PLUSAlthough there are a large number of hard disk drive docking stations available to the consumer, the combination of USB 3.0 speed and one-touch disk cloning separates the I-NA321U PLUS from the majority of its competition. the USB 3.0 interface should provide plenty of bandwidth to speed up data transfer between the docking station and PC, however, as more and more solid-state drives are shipping with 6 Gbps interfaces, the I-NA321U PLUS older SATA 2 interface will impact the maximum data rate available.
The I-NA321U PLUS is a nice looking, rounded edge box that is finished in a metallic silver, and provides a solid base for insertion of up to two hard drives. An external power supply is included, providing the necessary 12 V DC input to spin up the older mechanical hard disk drives. it is also nice to see a 6 foot long USB 3.0 cable which is sufficiently long to connect to the back of your PC and conveniently locate the device. A simple fold-out users manual is the only other item in the product box. This manual clearly describes the procedure for installation and use of the built-in cloning function.
On the front of the I-NA321U PLUS are 5 LEDs for power indication as well as the status of the copying process. Four LEDs provide an indication of progress in 25% increments when the disk duplication is in progress. The front of the unit also contains the reset and one-touch duplicate buttons. 
The rear of the I-NA321U PLUS contains the USB interface, power supply connection and an on/off button. The on/off button is useful for quickly adding and removing hard drives as well as powering off the unit when not in use.
INEO I-NA321U PLUS PerformanceThe first thing you will notice is that the I-NA321U PLUS is shipped without any software or drivers. This gives an indication of the simplicity of installation, as the operating system automatically recognizes the presence of the unit when powered on with a hard drive present in one of the slots. The one-button disk cloning feature is straightforward, and is clearly described in the included user manual. The drive slot towards the rear of the I-NA321U PLUS is clearly labeled "Source" and the front drive slot is labeled "Target". With the device powered off, the source drive should be placed in slot A and the target drive in slot B. It is important to remove the USB cable connected to the PC during this process. At this point the I-NA321U PLUS is powered on while the clone button is held for approximately 4 seconds. The source and target lights on the top of the device begin to blink, indicating that a clone process is in progress. Those progress LEDs on the front of the I-NA321U PLUS start to toggle from left to right as the cloning process proceeds from start to completion.Obviously the destination drive must be equal to or larger than the source drive. The one-touch drive cloning feature was tested using a system SSD and a larger mechanical hard drive as the destination. The 160GB system drive was easily duplicated by using the one touch copy function to clone the drive to the larger hard disk drive. The entire process only took about 6 minutes and the duplicated drive performed as expected. It should be noted that because it is an exact copy, the partition size on the larger hard drive will remain the same size as the source. It is then a very simple process to use the disk management tools in Windows to change the partition size to the maximum space available. One of the questions that arises when a dual docking station is available is whether or not both drives can be accessed simultaneously. Simply streaming video from the "Source" drive while making random read and writes to the "Target" drive worked successfully, but errors were displayed when an attempt was made to stream from both hard drives. This is especially obvious if a benchmark program such as CrystalDiskMark is used to perform a simultaneous benchmark on both drives. The I-NA321U PLUS was then benchmarked using both a 6Gbps and a 3Gbps solid-state drive for comparison. The solid-state drives were first benchmarked using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 to obtain an average read and write speed while connected directly to the motherboard SATA ports. The SSD's were then removed and the benchmark was performed with the SSD's in the I-NA321U PLUS. Test System
The first benchmark below shows the performance of the 3Gb/s Intel SSD in the motherboard SATA port. The second benchmark shows the same Intel SSD in the I-NA321U PLUS. It is obvious that there is a slight hit on the sequential read performance, while the 512K performance actually improves in the I-NA321U PLUS. Once the queue depth is increased to 32, there is a significant drop in performance.
Intel 3Gb/s SSD in SATA port
Intel 3Gb/s SSD in I-NA321U PLUSTaking a look at the performance of the 6Gb/s Samsung SSD, the benchmark below shows over 500 MBPS sequential read available from the motherboard 6 Gb/s port. Placing the Samsung SSD into the I-NA321U PLUS shows the impact of the 3Gb/s SATA port in the Ineo device. However, performance is still quite respectable and clearly demonstrates the value of the USB 3.0 interface .
Samsung 6Gb/s SSD in SATA Port
Samsung 6Gb/s SSD in I-NA321U PLUSINEO I-NA321U PLUSConclusionIMPORTANT: Although the rating and final score mentioned in this conclusion are made to be as objective as possible, please be advised that every author perceives these factors differently at various points in time. While we each do our best to ensure that all aspects of the product are considered, there are often times unforeseen market conditions and manufacturer changes which occur after publication that could render our rating obsolete. Please do not base any purchase solely on our conclusion as it represents our product rating specifically for the product tested, which may differ from future versions of the same product. Benchmark Reviews begins our conclusion with a short summary for each of the areas that we rate. Looking at the performance of the I-NA321U PLUS, it is obvious that it's maximum data transfer rate is limited by the 3Gb/s SATA port. However, the USB 3.0 interface does provide a huge advantage over USB 2.0 when the device is connected to a PC. The I-NA321U PLUS would be ideally paired with 3 Gb/s solid-state or mechanical hard drives. Any solid-state drive capable of the higher 6 Gb/s would be bandwidth limited by the SATA data rate of the external docking station. Most customers would not make a purchase decision for an external docking station based on the appearance of the product. The I-NA321U PLUS does its best to look good, and when there are no drives present in the device its appearance is quite innocuous. The bright LEDs on the front and top of the unit to a very good job of clearly indicating the status of the I-NA321U PLUS.
Almost all hard drive docking stations are made of some form of plastic and the I-NA321U PLUS is no exception. If this device were to accidentally fall, especially if there is an older mechanical drive in the unit, then it would be quite easy for the plastic casing to crack. Fortunately, the included long USB 3.0 cable should allow the I-NA321U PLUS to be placed in a safe location. As of February 2013, the Ineo I-NA321U PLUS is available for a very reasonable price of $55.99 (Newegg / Amazon). Considering that this is a USB 3.0 dual drive system with standalone drive cloning capability, this represents very good value for this type of product. The I-NA321U PLUS is a very useful peripheral component to have attached to your PC. Ideally the product would find use in a small IT department or a home with multiple PCs that are continuously upgraded. The I-NA321U PLUS comes into its strength as a standalone drive cloning system, which can save time and computer resources when a backup or duplicate drive needs to be created. The I-NA321U PLUS is also very useful as a simple expansion station to add up to two individual drives to any PC equipped with a USB 3.0 port. It is quite capable of accessing both hard drives in near real-time while connected to a single USB 3.0 port. If continuous access to the drive is required, then only a single drive should be accessed at one time. Pros:
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Comments
COMMENT QUESTION: What would you use the Ineo I-NA321U PLUS for?
Copying a smaller drive to a larger one when I run out of space is the only thing to come to mind ATMO.
I'll have to think about some other uses while I'm waiting for a 6Gbs. version. If there is one.