You love the dock!

We take a quick look at the Inatek FD2002 USB 3.0 Dual SATA dock with UASP support.

Today we'll take a quick look at the Inateck FD2002 USB 3.0 to dual SATA dock:

This is a UASP capable dock that should provide near full SATA 6Gb/sec throughput to each of two connected SATA SSDs or HDDs. This particular dock has no RAID capability, but exchanges that for an offline cloning / duplication mode. While the FD2002 uses ASMedia silicon to perform these tasks, similar limitations are inherent in competing hardware fron JMicron, which comes with a similar toggle of either RAID or cloning capability. Regardless, Inateck made the logical choice with the FD2002, as hot swap docks are not the best choice for hardware RAID.

The pair of ASMedia chips moving data within the FD2002. The ASM1153E on the left couples the USB 3.0 link to the ASM1091R, which multiplexes to the pair of SATA ports and apparently adds cloning functionality.

Packaging:

The compact and functional box is handy for storing the dock and necessary hardware when not in use.

All included hardware – instruction manual, power cord, USB 3.0 cord, the dock itself…

…and a handy vacuum formed plastic 'dust cap'. Not particularly durable, but more than sufficient to keep dust and other debris from falling into the SATA connectors and dock ports when not in use.

At the rear we find a power button, power connector, and USB 3.0 port. The FD2002 can actually function as pictured above since the built in cloning mode is initiated from the dock itself and requires no interaction from a host PC.

Cloning:

We tested the cloning process first, with a pair of Intel SSD 730 SSDs. The JMS561U is not partition aware but does require that the sector count of the destination drive (port B) be *larger* (not equal) than that of the source drive (Port A). The cloning process is simple yet cryptic enough to hopefully avoid accidental cloning operations from occurring.

To start a clone operation, hold the 'Clone' button for three seconds, release, see 100% light lit, then immediately re-press the clone button to start the operation. It appears sufficiently picky on the timing that accidental cloning operations should be difficult to impossible. During cloning, the percent indicators will incrementally flash and then stay lit until all four are on solid, which indicates completion.

We cloned from a 240GB to a 480GB SSD 730 as a speed test. The FD2002 cloned the 240GB of data in 10 minutes, which jives with the 1TB per hour claimed in the JMS561U documentation.

Performance:

Now to test performance when connected to a USB 3.0 host. We placed a 512GB Samsung 850 Pro into the dock and connected it to an ASUS Sabertooth X99 test system. Here is the result of an ATTO run at QD=4:

No issues reaching near full SATA 6GB/s speeds, so this should be a fairly speedy dock that will have no issues maxing out any installed HDD. We confirmed compatibility with HDD capacities all the way up to Western Digital's 6TB Red, which had no issue communicating. Our testing also revealed that the JMicron chip does not seem to scale to queue depths greater than 4 (an issue we initially discovered in an earlier Inateck product using a JMicron bridge chip). Queue depths of 4 should be sufficient to get some random access performance scaling during typical HDD use, and QD=4 is sufficient to reach the high large file throughputs seen above. We don't suspect typical docked HDD duties resulting in queue depths far beyond where the FD2002 tops out at, so the negative performance of this observed limitation should be minimal.

Pricing:

Inateck sells these direct through Amazon at the link above. 

Conclusion:

The Inateck FD2002 is a fast UASP SATA dock that looks sleek and functions well. The cloning function is speedy but limited in that the destination drive must be larger than the source (not equal), and we would have liked to see an integrated fan. WIth a low price and decent build quality, I consider it a nice dock with a bonus cloning feature. Even if rarely used, you won't need to blow the dust off of it thanks to the included dust cap!