Price: $39.99 - $26.99
(as of Sep 29, 2025 11:35:17 UTC – Details)
Transfer Your Data with Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA Docking Station
Are you tired of slow data transfer speeds and cumbersome setups? The Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA External Hard Drive Lay-Flat Docking Station (EC-DFLT) is designed to simplify your life. Whether you’re a tech enthusiast or a casual user, this docking station supports both 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA HDDs and SSDs, making file transfers a breeze with its lightning-fast speeds.
Features & Specifications
- Compatibility: Supports 2.5” and 3.5” SATA HDDs and SSDs.
- Transfer Speed: Up to 5 Gbps with USB 3.0; backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1.
- UASP Support: Provides up to 20% faster transfer rates when used with UASP-supported devices.
- Power Switch: Includes an on/off switch for energy efficiency.
- LED Indicators: Monitor power and activity status easily.
- Plug & Play: No drivers needed; just connect and go!
- System Compatibility: Works with Windows (2000/XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10) and macOS.
- Package Contents: Includes docking station, power supply, USB 3.0 cable, and user manual.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Fast Transfers: Benefit from USB 3.0 speeds for quick data transfers.
- Easy to Use: Plug-and-play functionality makes getting started a snap.
- Versatile Compatibility: Works with both 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives, catering to various user needs.
- Solid Build: The lay-flat design provides stability and ease of access.
Cons
- Limited Power for Larger Drives: The included power adapter is necessary for 3.5” drives; users must ensure it’s ready.
- Initial Setup May Take Time: New drives may require initialization in disk management.
Performance Review
The Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA Docking Station excels in performance, delivering exceptional transfer speeds of up to 5 Gbps. Users report that transferring large files is faster and smoother than ever, thanks to the UASP support. The build quality is impressive, featuring a stable layout that keeps drives secure even during operation.
Setting up the docking station is a breeze—simply plug it in, turn it on, and you’re ready to go. Its compatibility with various operating systems means that you won’t face any hassle using it across different machines. Additionally, the free software download for Acronis True Image offers users the opportunity to easily clone data, adding significant value to this product.
Who Should Buy This?
This docking station is perfect for:
- Tech Enthusiasts: Those who frequently upgrade or switch between different drives.
- Professionals: For quick backups of larger files in a timely manner.
- Casual Users: Anyone who needs simple, reliable, and fast access to their data without the complications of internal setups.
Final Verdict
The Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA External Hard Drive Lay-Flat Docking Station (EC-DFLT) is a must-have accessory for anyone who values speed and efficiency. With its robust performance, effortless setup, and cross-compatibility, it’s an investment worth making.
Ready to experience turbocharged file transfers? Check out the Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA Docking Station on Amazon and elevate your data management game!
A Guy Named Courtney –
A Lifesaver for Old Hard Drives!
I bought this Sabrent adapter to rescue some data off an old hard drive I had lying around, and I’m so glad I did. This thing is a total game-changer. It’s incredibly easy to use, you literally just plug the hard drive into the adapter and connect the USB cable to your computer. The connection was fast and stable, which made transferring files a breeze. I had no issues with dropped connections or slow speeds, even when moving large files.If you have old hard drives sitting in a drawer and want to access the data without the hassle of installing them in a computer, this is the perfect solution. It’s compact, works exactly as advertised, and saved me a lot of time and effort. Highly recommended!
Larry Daily –
Great Hard Drive Enclosure
This is the second one of these I’ve bought and both work quite well. Easy to use and reliable. Love them.
RetiredEE –
2.5 years later, I upgrade my rating from 2 stars to 5 stars!
I bought the Sabrent ED-DFLT enclosure so that I could format various hard drives on my iMac. It’s a rather long story, which I’ll shorten to this: I confirmed that the Sabrent enclosure worked when I received it by using an old 2TB drive. I then tossed the box and waited for my 6TB Western Digital Caviar Green drive to arrive from Amazon a couple of weeks later. When plopped into the Sabrent, the new drive showed up on my Mac’s desktop. I then set about creating a large encrypted disk image on the drive. It chugged away for 4 full days, seemingly working for the first 3. But after day 4, the formatting was clearly hung, and it had taken my Mac down with it. Upon rebooting, the drive no longer showed up at all. Disk Utility could not even see it. After a lot of detective work, too long to describe here, I confirmed that the 6TB drive was still working fine, but the Sabrent logic board had died, obviously a case of infant mortality.The good news: it can handle large capacity hard drives. The bad news: not for very long…And of course, since I tossed the boxing, there is no returning the Sabrent. I therefore spent $23 on a brick, although it won’t break me. This case of infant mortality is probably just a fluke, but an annoying one when it happens to you. I should have kept the box a while longer. My bad.UPDATE 1/2118: To Sabrent’s great credit, and this is going back about 2.5 years ago, they stepped in and replaced the enclosure, no charge. I tested it but ran into issues trying to do the above formatting again, and threw it on my junk pile. With hindsight, I’m now realizing that the issue was most likely the hard drive I was using, which I got by ripping open a Western Digital external hard drive and removing it. There’s something odd about the firmware in these drives. They’re just “not right” when taken out of their manufacturer’s shell and fully exposed like this. I think my issue was the hard drive, and NOT Sabrent. Coupled with their excellent customer service, I’ve now increased the rating to five stars. Because …I just bought some 8TB Hitachi hard drives and it was time to format them, again with encryption. These are new, bare hard drives from Amazon, not something I ripped out of an external HD box! Fortunately, I still had the Sabrent enclosure, so I pulled one off the pile, attached the 12V/1.5A power adapter to it, put the 8TB drive in, connected to my Mac Mini, and just like that, the hard drive mounted on the desktop. I formatted it in HFS+, then created a new encrypted disk image, and let it run.This time, all went well. I discovered that if you open Sierra’s Activity Monitor and click on Disk Activity, you get a readout of how fast the data is moving across the interface. I was seeing it move between 110 – 160 MB/sec, averaging about 130 MB/sec. That’s not bad at all on my 2012 iMac with a 4-core i7 processor running Sierra (12.6). It’s not the fastest i7 there is, so you have to remember that there are calculations that first have to be made before the data can be spit out of the USB3 ports for writing. That takes time to execute, which has to slow transfers down somewhat. USB of any speed never hits its theoretical maximum anyway (4.8Gbps for USB3, or about 600 MB/sec). Considering I was getting only 25 MB/sec with USB2 on this same machine (theoretical maximum speed = 60 MB/sec), actual speeds are less than theoretical speeds by about the same factor for each version of USB. The full 8TB of writing took 17 hours, which averages out to 130 MB/sec, consistent with what I see in Activity Monitor. I would say that’s pretty good. I’m happy.Side note: I got to wondering about Sabrent’s advice to run a firmware update. I’m a Mac guy, but I have an old PC running XP. I thought I would take a stab at the upgrade. I downloaded it to the PC, but the update would not run at all. You tell it to RUN the update and nothing happens. My neighbor has a PC running Windows 10, so I took the dock, power supply, and a USB cable to his place. He downloaded the update to his PC, followed the .pdf instructions exactly, the interface presented is NOT what the .pdf shows, but tried running it anyway. Same issue: hit the RUN button and nothing happens. It doesn’t freeze or anything like that. It simply does nothing. So much for that!The key point I’m making is that this same dock that I bought 2.5 years ago (August 2015) easily sees my 8TB drives, runs flawlessly, and runs quite fast, all with no firmware update whatsoever. I don’t understand Sabrent’s statement that older docks (2.5 years old?) without an update are limited to 4TB. Not mine!I do not understand why other commenters can’t get it to work right. It works perfectly for me.Considering Sabrent’s great customer support, excellent USB3 performance, full support for an 8TB drive, and it’s very low price, I gotta give it 5 stars!UPDATE 1/30/2018: Plugging into two different iMacs running Snow Leopard (10.6.8), neither can see any drive plugged into it. Odd, since at one time it could/did. I don’t know what the difference is, but if you’re running Snow Leopard, you might consider passing on the Sabrent.UPDATE 2/12/2018: Okay, so the Sabrent isn’t happy with Snow Leopard. Separately, I plugged the Sabrent into my 2012 Mac Mini w/i7 processor and running Sierra (12.6). I plugged a second, different external USB3 drive enclosure to another port, loaded a pair of 8TB X300 Toshiba hard drives in each, and proceeded to move data from one drive to the other. Measured speed is about 130 MB/sec, which is about max transfer rates that these hard drives can deliver. No complaints!
Melvin –
Overall Good, Cooling may be an issue.
Downsides: My hard drives seem to overheat with this enclosure. I’ve tried several hard drives in it and they all overheat during heavy prolonged transfers (they stop working and i must reset the hdd/enclosure). There is a version of this enclosure with a built in fan so this is obviously a (somewhat) known issue.Upsides: Super fast shipping! I really like the design (besides the cooling) and it worked straight out of the box. Power supply was included and installing the HDD was as simple as sliding it in. Great Product. Would have rated it 5 stars if cooling was better.
William J Temple –
Simple and Works – SATA Drive reader.
The SATA drive reader worked out great. At first I was quite skeptical of the product as it looks to be made of the cheapest plastic. I do like that the unit comes with a separate power brick vice connecting directly to the computer for power. Worth the money. Sometimes looks can be deceiving. Next time I will get either an expanded unit to also read NvMe m.2 SSD drive or a docking station to utilize all my loose drives.
The barefoot goddess –
Easy peezy as long as you understand the basics of computers, like how to find a drive or file
Oh ma gosh, I love this thing! I had eight desktop computers that had croaked and I wanted to get the data off them (stuff from my childhood, even). I bought an unpowered interface and NOTHING. I got prices for a tech to do it (holy moses!). I had given up and thought it was all just lost (a TB of music, too). But, I ordered this to try one last time. Worked PERFECT. I got the data off all but one drive. I didn’t work with the old laptop HDDs, but I haven’t found anything that does yet. But, you just plug your drive in (HDD or SSD) and read it like any external drive. I even keep a drive plugged in and can run it from my desktop when I want o play old games or just use it for file storage. This was very inexpensive and I would say that if you understand how to use an external or even a thumbdrive, you can figure this out.
D. Cortez –
Could not be more pleased
This docking station worked flawlessly for me. My 8 yo Dell Win 10 PC had to go. Bought a new HP with TB SSD. I was not able to back up my old Dell HD which was a WD 3.5 in unit. I tried to remove it before EWasting it. Could not do it. So took it to Geek Squad. Charged me $40 to remove the WD drive and the smaller SSD. They E wasted my old Dell no charge.I purchased this Sabrent lay flat from Amazon, came overnight! Opened the lid and firmly pushed in my WD drive.. Connected the power cable and USB line to my new PC. The HP Win11 PC recognized the new external drive. It asked if I wanted to use “file explorer”. I did and all my old data is there for me to view or retrieve. All of this made me nervous since the Dell could not be started. But the WD HD was in good shape and now I have 8 yrs of data I need to use and achive safely This product deserves more than 5 stars.
Jim & Grace –
Ease of set up, and it worked perfectly. Recommend to any one.
sonic2000 –
システムのバックアップには最適です。排熱も問題ないと思いますが、最近は気温が高いのでそのへんは各自調整していくのが良いでしょう。なにより、引っ越しソフトウェアがダウンロード可能なのが良好。使いながらレビュー追加していきます。
KING OF zzZZ –
Avantages :Polyvalence : Compatible avec diverses tailles de disques durs et SSD, offrant une grande flexibilité.Vitesse de Transfert Élevée : USB 3.2 assure des transferts rapides, essentiel pour les gros fichiers.Installation Facile : Montage sans outils, pratique pour changer les disques rapidement.Prise en Charge UASP : Optimise la vitesse de transfert, rendant les opérations plus efficaces.Kit Complet : Livré avec tous les accessoires nécessaires, y compris le câble et l’alimentation.Inconvénients :Dépendance à l’Alimentation Externe : Nécessite une source d’alimentation séparée, ce qui peut être encombrant.Taille et Poids : Peut être plus volumineux et lourd que d’autres solutions de stockage externe.Compatibilité : Bien qu’il soit polyvalent, il pourrait ne pas être compatible avec certains anciens disques durs ou systèmes.Pas de Fonctionnalités Supplémentaires : Manque de fonctionnalités avancées comme le cryptage ou la redondance de données.Fiabilité à Long Terme : La qualité de construction et la fiabilité à long terme peuvent varier selon la marque et le modèle.
Arian Shamil –
Ho acquistato questa dockstation USB 3.0 per semplificare e ottimizzare la mia postazione di lavoro e devo dire che svolge egregiamente il suo lavoro.Semplice e minimale, viene riconosciuta senza problemi e la velocita’ di trasferimento e’ buona.La qualità costruttiva è solida, con un design compatto e discreto, perfetto da tenere sulla scrivania senza ingombrare.L’installazione è stata semplice e immediata, senza bisogno di alcun driver aggiuntivo.In definitiva, questa dockstation USB 3.0 si è rivelata un acquisto eccellente per migliorare l’efficienza lavorativa e organizzare al meglio l’ambiente tecnologico. Consigliata a chi cerca praticità, velocità e affidabilità in un unico prodotto.
Wong Kuan Suan –
To connect old drives to extract old data back.3.5 and 2.5 drives are not an issue