This post kinda scared me:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1gwwm4i/i_recently_learned_that_the_35_sabrent_hard_drive/

I was about to buy this Sabrent hard drive docking station for this project but now I am having second thoughts.
https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Docking-Tool-Free-Installation-EC-CH2B/dp/B09646W9PX?th=1

I have a full PC, Tomahawk x570 motherboard with available sata connectors. Ideally wouldn't want to open up my case every time just to add more photos/videos to the HDDs. My case is a mini Lianli so the HDD's wouldn't fit in there and it would just be a mess on my desk so that's why I was looking at that docking station solution.

I think NAS for this is overkill for cold storage I may access only a handful of times a year - does anyone have any cheaper alternatives that will allow me to move the HDDs to future solutions if I do start out with something more scrappy? Maybe a docking station or external enclosures that have worked for others.

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    parent

  • I have 4 sabrent HDD enclosures - two tens and two fives - and I've never had an issue with them.

    parent

    And you can move the HDDs onto other non-sabrent enclosures with no issues? do you have a link to your sabrent enclosure?

    parent root
    parent root

  • I have a sabrent enclosure for a couple years now never an issue yet.

    parent

  • Took my 2 cold store drives out this week. Guess how many failed...

    parent

  • I use this for occasional hard drive and bluray drive use. Works great and has a power switch for easy on/off.

    If you're gonna do mirror don't worry about raid, just backup your data twice.

    https://a.co/d/03s6rPb

    parent

    Same, I wouldn’t bother with RAID as it’s more overhead/opportunities for errors to happen. Just schedule regular syncs between drives and that’s that.

    parent root

  • Open up your case to add photos to drives?

    parent

    I mean because my PC tower is a mini it can't actually hold the drives permanently in there so I'd have to keep opening it to connect the cold drives to move photos from the onboard NVME to the HDD. The other case would be that the case is always open and an ugly sata connector hangs out to a bare HDD.

    parent root

  • i use the single bay version of that the 32 dollar one , had it years no problems works great . i move the hdds between diff docking stations

    parent

  • I was in that original thread, and I have a Sabrent single enclosure that has the issue listed. Basically, anything over 2TB will get formatted in a specific way that only lets them work in the same enclosure. I tried it with a few drives and found it to be true.

    Smaller drives, no problem, but bigger drives would not work in another enclosure or computer, nor would anything formatted before being enclosed be readable.

    https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/gpt-disk-not-initilized-when-moved-from-usb-dock-to-sata.3484094/#post-21300469

    And I think this may be happening with the docking station you're looking at. In their reviews:

    1.0 out of 5 stars Dealbreaker is drives only work in the dock - not in a PC or elsewhere.

    Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2025

    Size: Single Bay SATA Dock – USB-C 10GbpsVerified Purchase

    I really wanted to like and keep this vertical loading dock, and spent time with Sabrent support to make it happen. But it just doesn't work out. This dock has a special unique way of accessing large drives, which makes the drive UNREADABLE in other docks or when hooked up to a PC. I contacted support, who told me there is no firmware update available to solve this (contrary to what other Sabrent reviews have said in the part). They said in order to use this outside of the dock, I would have to format it in a PC. I did do that, but even weirder behavior emerged. The file systems shown when looked up to the PC only shows the PC written files, and not the dock written files (And a lot of empty space available). When hooked up to the dock, it shows the dock written files and the PC written files. Obviously something here is not right, and it's not trustworthy to use. I repeated the process twice, also trying to format on both the dock and PC in case they had their file table information in different places.

    For using this as a backup drive interface, it's too risky. You lose access to your files if the dock breaks, is misplaced, or becomes unsupported.

    parent

    yea so I am confused. Others in this thread have no problems so why does this issue exist for you and other reviewers?

    parent root

  • Is this also a problem with the 5bay Sabrent DAS? I've been wanting to get that one. 

    parent