Introduction

Let's be honest; we have all seen these desktop HDD docking stations before and they are actually getting common on store shelves. Many companies are making them; they all pretty much do the same thing and everyone who has a stack of hard drives sitting around either wants one, or needs one. So, what makes ineo Technology's HDD dock different?

ineo Technology started in 2007 with a focus on NAS servers. Since then the company has expanded to mother storage products and is looking to become a big player in the storage accessory market. Their latest device, the Docking Station that we are looking at today, does have a cool feature that we have yet to see in a desktop dock; it uses USB 3.0 to connect to your computer.

Let's take a look at the specs and see if the new ineo Technology USB 3.0 Docking Station has what you need.

Specifications, Pricing and Availability

The official product name for ineo Tech's USB 3.0 Docking Station is I-NA317U+. We will just be calling it the Docking Station for obvious reasons. As the name implies, the Docking Station uses USB 3.0 to connect to your desktop or notebook computer. The system is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 for your legacy computers, but you will get the most performance out of USB 3.0.

The Dock accepts all SATA 2.5 or 3.5 inch drives and allows them to act as naked external drives. Since the Dock uses USB 3.0, most drives will not take a performance hit other than not being able to take advantage of native command queuing, a feature USB 3.0 does not utilize.

The beauty of the ineo Tech USB 3.0 Docking Station has to do with its pricing and availability. Newegg has the Dock in stock at 29.99 USD and it is the lowest priced USB 3.0 desktop docking station offered. There are actually over 20 available, which should tell you how covenant they are to have.

Aside from Newegg, we also found ineo Tech products at Walmart's online store. ineo doesn't have products inside the Walmart stores as far as we can tell, but it would be quite an accomplishment if they were able to make that happen. They do, however, already have their feet in the door.