NexStar TX Dual Bay USB 3.0 Hard Drive Dock (NST-D428S3-BK)

This is the second NexStar dock that I have owned and I bought it based on my experience with the single bay Vantec NexStar USB 2.0 eSATA Dock NST-D100SU White dock which I bought back in 2012. The single bay unit with a 1TB WD Black Caviar hard drive has been connected to my desktop computer via eSATA as a backup drive for four years now and has performed flawlessly over that time. The new dual bay dock is being used with two 2TB WD Black hard drives, one as main storage and the second as a backup drive. This dock is currently connected to my laptop via USB3. All three hard drives are available from both computers via my wired network. One difference that I have noticed between the eSATA and USB3 connections is the tendency for the units connected via USB3 to go to sleep when not being used, whereas the unit connected via eSATA on the desktop is always instantly available. This problem probably has more to do with the USB settings on the laptop rather than a problem with the dock itself and is something I will investigate further. At this stage I haven't tried the new unit via the eSATA connection but I wouldn't expect it to perform any differently to the single bay unit. Apart from the (minor) problem with the USB3 connection both units have performed flawlessly and I would have no hesitation in recommending either dock.

Great dock, grabbed one of these when on sale and very happy with it. I have had the previous USB 2.0/eSATA single bay model for some years, and it has been very useful, so when it came time to upgrade some gear, I looked at the new USB 3.0/eSATA 2 bay dock. I don't like the white colour (since I'm sure it will yellow with age) but couldn't get black shipped to my region. I hate that everything on Amazon is treated differently depending on where you live, and also, Amazon, please stop suggesting stuff that doesn't ship to my region! I use it both with USB 3.0 for laptop connectivity, but where it really differentiates itself is using the eSATA connectivity as an external device with my old QNAP NAS, which only has USB 2.0 and eSATA - makes backups much faster!

Excellent working product. So convenient to be able to check out extra drives without having to install them in a PC. I also use it for backing up PC and then store drives in safe place. Update: 05-22-2014 Spoke to Quick. Two months later drive keeps disconnecting when I try and copy 1.25gb or more data. Backup program now hangs also. USB device error appears as dock malfunctions. Too late to send back to Amazon. Waiting for reply from Vantech Support

I was buying a dual bay hard drive dock to copy data from one drive to another, but this dock I can't figure out how to make the dual bay work at same time (this product comes with no any documentation!) 1) only the 1st bay (in front) works with eSATA or USB3.0; 2nd (in the back) works only with USB3.0; or say: 2nd bay connected with eSATA doesn't work; 2) I can't figure out how to make the both bay work; I insert two drives, connect both eSATA and USB, but seems USB takes priority, if I connect eSATA first, then connect USB, the new drive under USB is found but eSATA drive disappear: Whenever USB is connected, the eSATA won't work; Whenever 1st bay has drive, the other drive in 2nd bay won't be detected; Performance data: Seagate 1TB SATA drive, recognized under Linux, write 10GB of zero byte, with eSATA it archives hard drive limit 100MB/s, with USB it's only 30MB/s, maybe my laptop usb socket is not 3.0; scsi 12:0:0:0: Direct-Access ST910006 40NS CC01 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 sd 12:0:0:0: [sdf] 1953525168 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB) $ time dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdf bs=4k count=$[256*10000] seek=$RANDOM 2560000+0 records in 2560000+0 records out 10485760000 bytes (9.8 GiB) copied, 366.033 s, 27 MiB/s real 6m6.036s user 0m0.604s sys 0m11.790s $ iostat -x 1 avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 2.30 0.51 2.04 48.47 0.00 46.68 Device: rrqm/s wrqm/s r/s w/s rkB/s wkB/s avgrq-sz avgqu-sz await r_await w_await svctm %util sda 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 sdf 0.00 6496.00 0.00 228.00 0.00 27360.00 240.00 143.22 642.68 0.00 642.68 4.39 100.10 Update: Under USB mode, not detecting 2nd bay may be because of this: A:Some distributions (notably Red Hat) turn off the kernel option CONFIG_SCSI_MULTI_LUN [...] You may check by this: $ cat /sys/module/scsi_mod/parameters/max_luns 1 If it's one, you can write it with 2 or a larger value; then unplug usb cable and replug, # echo 2 > /sys/module/scsi_mod/parameters/max_luns or use scsi_mod.max_luns=2 kernel boot parameter; [308138.709650] scsi 45:0:0:0: Direct-Access ST910006 40NS CC01 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 [308138.712780] scsi 45:0:0:1: Direct-Access WDC WD16 00AAJS-00YZCA0 01.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 [308138.713146] sd 45:0:0:0: [sdb] 1953525168 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB) [308138.716140] sd 45:0:0:1: [sdc] 312581808 512-byte logical blocks: (160 GB/149 GiB) as the <scsi_host:channel:id:lun> number shown above, under scsi_host45 as a two LUN device, without unplug/replug cable, you may also manually claim the 2nd LUN: # readlink -f /sys/class/scsi_host/host45 # echo '- - 1' > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.1/2-1.1:1.0/host45/scsi_host/host45/scan SCSI has standard REPORT_LUN command but the dock is unable to report lun by itself, driver has to assume 2 lun or more. (the Windows usb-storage driver and some Linux distro assumes default 15 could recognize all drives as multiple lun scsi device) (This should be the product firmware REPORT_LUN defect)

Muy fácil de usar exelente producto lo compraría de nuevo

Super casing just plug n play...8Tb per bay supported

Great Product

Works wonderfully for 3.5 and 2.5 data swaps and backups. USB 3 seems to be limited to 500MBs but that's way more than an HDD will spin up to and sufficient for most SSD data transfers (if you're on a budget). * Transfer limitation may be a result of my computer, so don't necessarily take that as a hard fact.

Buen producto, yo lo tengo con 1 HDD 3.5" de 4 TB y 1 HD 2.5" de 640GB y funciona bastante bien. Advertencia: conectar el cable directo al puerto USB 3.0 de la computadora, no conectarlo a un multipuertos USB ya que estoy crea un cuello de botella que hace las operaciones de lectura y escritura al disco se vayan a tiempos ridículamente altos y hacen que se trabe cualquier operación.