For testing we used a 3.5" Western Digital 160 GB 7200 RPM 8 MB cache HDD. During the entire testing process, the unit worked without a hitch with both Windows Vista and XP, there was never a noise, and the unit remained planted firmly on the desk with no vibration.


The horizontal blue LED under the circular power LED lights up when the hard disk is accessed.

Performance

The iStarUSA dock brings an outstanding 34.5 MB/s average read speed which is the top on our list and makes for an excellent performer! We finally have a dock that replaces the Coolermaster X-Craft at the top of our list for average bandwidth! CPU utilization comes in at a good 4%, and while there are a few better docks in this respect, the iStarUSA dock does better than most. With a 35.1 MB/s burst speed the dock pushes USB 2.0 speed to its limits.




ATTO shows about the same read speeds as HD Tach benchmark. It shows read speeds just under what HD Tach showed plus excellent write speeds for a USB 2.0 dock. Truly the iStarUSA HDD dock is a solid performer and transfers files as quickly as the USB 2.0 interface will allow it.