StarTech Standalone Hard Drive Eraser And USB 3.0 Dock Capsule Review
by Billy Tallis on February 16, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- USB 3.0
- SATA
- DAS
- StarTech.com
Final Words
The StarTech Standalone Hard Drive Eraser and USB 3.0 Dock's feature set is great, and there are no obvious omissions. All of its features are easy to use and as self-explanatory as can be expected from a screen that only shows two lines of text; no manual is needed, but a one-page leaflet further clarifies how to use the device.
The dock's performance is functional, but disappointing. The USB dock capability is clearly a secondary concern. It's fast enough to mostly keep pace with a mechanical hard drive, but its performance with a solid state drive is much worse than we would have expected based just on the SATA 2 and USB 3.0 speed limits. Its random access performance is particularly bad and clearly much worse than some external SSDs we've tested that are also using USB to SATA bridge chips. This isn't a device anyone should consider as their primary external storage interface. In the context of data security it is sufficient for inspecting what's on a drive or perhaps for re-imaging after wiping. If you don't need to erase drives routinely, you can get higher-performing docks for a fraction of the cost: this dock has a MSRP of $283.99 compared to only $71.99 for a StarTech USB 3.1 dock that supports 6Gbps SATA and UASP.
As a hard drive eraser, the performance is also a concern. Despite sustaining over 200MB/s of writes over USB, its full-drive overwrite modes only wipe drives at 125MB/s. In some cases this won't matter, as a big drive might need to be left as an overnight job either way, but issuing the same write command with an incremented logical block address shouldn't be hard. It seems likely that the FPGA is being used to implement a processor core that just isn't fast enough; it also seems like that processor is getting in the way for the USB mode when the SATA commands should be passed directly to the drive. Fortunately, the dock is equipped to receive firmware updates, so StarTech might be able to improve things. If the time taken to wipe a hard drive is not a concern, then the eraser dock is a very convenient turnkey solution. If you have to process a very large number of drives and especially if you have to image large batches of drives, a computer with multiple hot-swap bays will be preferable.
The one mode where I have no performance complaints is also the mode I actually need. Performing an ATA Secure Erase under Windows is inconvenient at best and frequently impossible. With the addition of a hot-swap bay to our SSD testbed PC, what had been the most ridiculously complicated step of the test procedure is now foolproof and fast. With a minimum of ten erases per drive needed for our client drive test suite, the eraser dock is a very welcome tool and it's just about perfect for this use case.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
38 Comments
View All Comments
Murloc - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
I guess the point of this thing is being easy to use for employees, the time is not really a concern if you have other work to do anyway.The USB dock thing looks like something they just slapped there since people may want to check what's on a drive they found before wiping it. So performance is not really key.
edzieba - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
The "erase by overwriting" method is completely redundant for any HDD implementing ATA SECURE ERASE. Not only is SE the fastest method to wipe data (limited only by the drive controller, not the interface) it wiped sectors in the G-list that a normal wipe would miss. This includes DBAN and other redundant multi-overwrite methods. Multiple overwrites have been entirely unnecessary since the invention of the GMR head well over two decades ago.Babar Javied - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
Expand please?I have never even heard of ATA secure erase but it sounds interesting. How does this make overwriting redundant? since the data on the platters does need to be erased
joex4444 - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
It's a little surprising you've never heard of it since it was mentioned in the 3rd paragraph of the article, albeit quickly.Guspaz - Tuesday, February 16, 2016 - link
This assumes that you trust the drive's secure erase implementation. Following up the secure erase with a single overwrite is probably sufficient.Azethoth - Wednesday, February 17, 2016 - link
Exactly. Secure erase on SSD just marks all blocks as empty, so factory default but the data is really still there. Absent proof of no physical way to access these blocks and read their data you really do need to overwrite at least once and take the hit to longevity ;-)azrael- - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Apparently you didn't read the article either (or anywhere else it has been written). Securely erasing an SSD usually consists of the drive throwing away the encryption key it has used for storing your data. The data is still there, but noone can read them.Senti - Friday, February 19, 2016 - link
The keyword here is "usually". Imagine you are the one responsible for secure deletion of information: would you blindly believe that "drive should do it properly and not leave the old key somewhere" or would you double-check? The answer is obvious.Lerianis - Saturday, February 20, 2016 - link
Considering that this is being done by tech literate organizations. I think they would have verified the whole "No way to restore the drive!" that they are pushing.leexgx - Saturday, February 20, 2016 - link
i guess he should of not used the word "usually"if the drive uses AES encryption (SED drive) then all the drive has to do is reset the key when Secure erase is done (this is why it can take upto 1-2 hours to wipe none encryption HDD drive) and all data is lost and if that is not enough it also commands the Trim all parts of the flash so all NAND is clean all parts of the SSD will come back with 00000000 (unlike a HDD there is a chance to recover data but if its a self encryption HDD/SSD drive then there is no data recovery once ATA Secure erase has been used)
if ATA secure erase takes more than 2 minutes on a Self encrypting drive(HDD or SSD), the drive it self is not encrypted as SED drives should just reset the keys and all data has gone puff (full TRIM on all parts of the flash is also performed as well to bring the drive to a complete clean and max performance state)
on SSDs even none SED drives a secure erase should only take 30 seconds - 2 minutes as all it has to do is command reset the pages and TRIM the whole drive witch is a very fast task