Voyager S3 USB 5Gb/s Drive Dock for 2.5 and 3.5-inch SATA Drives

It has worked very well for over 6 months now on my M1 MacBook Pro. I use it with spinning magnetic disks for archival and it seems to let the old-style HDs operate as fast at they can. They moved the power button to the back, which just seems more sensible. I haven't run into an HD it didn't work with (unlike some other docks I have had) Very pleased.

When I look at reviews of other ~similar docks, I see lots of cautionary tales. But OWC and NewerTech represent a solid brand that OWC cares about and don't sell marginal product. It's a bit higher-priced than the competition, but what's your data worth? What's your convenience worth (the product working flawlessly)? I just ran a clone of my boot disk - (~1TB) and it worked flawlessly. Yes, that's only one data point of course. But it's quiet, runs cool and just works. I'm happy. The only negative is the the USB3 (A>B) cable is not very long (about 18"?). But it's high quality with ferrite dampeners.

I got this to replace another external enclosure that didn't work (see my reviews). This is a really nice product, works great. Pros: solidly-built, easy to use, and very fast - measured transfer speed of 300 MB/s via USB 3.0. Cons: requires a power brick, can't run on just USB power (for some silly reason). A bit large, not going in your shirt pocket. I'd certainly recommend this, if its form-factor works for you.

When the screen on my 17-inch MacBook Pro was damaged the replacement cost was too high, in my mind. I scrapped it, but salvaged its two hard drives, which went into a drawer to be forgotten. Then I saw this dock and realized I could use them for backup drives. The price was right, so I gave it a shot. I gave it 5 stars because it did everything I needed. Now I have two full-scale backups. And not long after an unknown file was corrupted that stopped me from sending and receiving email, among other things. i tried everything and was stymied. I used Mac’s Tim e Machine and, for the first time, attempted a full replacement using one of those drives. Voila. I was back in business after wasting many hours of fruitless troubleshooting. The dock was money WELL spent.

use daily

When my old Mac quit a long time ago, I was disappointed I didn’t get the photos and video off of it. Graphics processor was broken so screen didn’t work and although the computer ran you could not see anything (even with external monitor). This is amazing for the money. Took the hard drive out of the Mac and onto this doc. Immediately it powered the hard drive and was easily ready by my new MacBook Pro. Definitely recommend.

WOW, how did I not know and/or use one of these docking stations earlier?!?!?! They are amazing. Similar to an enclosure but even more useful if you have multiple external HDs. I actually got this b/c my desktop died when I tried adding a new 3TB hd, so I wanted something to at least check the HD for issues. This let me connect the new 3TB to my laptop via USB 2.0 so I could partition, format, and start using the new hard drive right away. The fact that it's backwards compatible w/ USB 2.0 and can use 2.5" and 3.5" drives up to 4TB is very useful too. Likely going to buy a few more as gifts for my tech friends and family.

I've used a fair number of doc stations, last transaction back in in 2020, I bought this and a Spindo. I thought the Spindo (dual slot) was going out, put this into use and it's been fine. I've tested it as a backup & clone device and a boot device for my Windows 10 PC. Booting from it with the normal RAIDed OS drives still in place, pleasantly the drive retained the removable drive letter and did not replace my normal c:\ drive. That would be my personal preference if I had to use it as a boot drive to troubleshoot my normal system drive, of course it also verified the clone (done with Macrium) worked. It booted fast and backed up fast connected to the rear USB 3.2 ports on my ProArt Motherboard. I've only used it with Basic partitions and drives of 2 TB or less. Since 2 TB fits my uses I don't feel a need for GPT partitions which add some complexity I prefer dual slot docks but there are a lot of suspect reviews on many of the more current docks and the dual slot Spindo I have, it wasn't really bad, it just doesn't like older power thirsty mechanical drives. I may have fixed that by changing the power supply to one 100w larger The knock to 4 stars is because of the single slot. It's not a big problem for me, I run 500gb RAID SSDs for the OS and 2TB RIADed mechanical drives for the data. I don't use the full 500GB for the OS, I keep some unused space for the trim function to use (as the SSD wears). Though I try to minimize the SSD wear by using a RAM drive for the browser caches. I have plenty of room to keep an image of the SSD OS drive on the mechanical drive if I desire. Normally I use a rotating series of offline backups for both DATA and OS, done with Macrium and cloned to a drive in the dock. RAID is great, it allows for graceful recovery from a single drive failure but a few off line backups are mandatory in my view. It's hard for a blue screening new device driver (yes I speak from personal experience), a virus or a disastrous hardware failure to ruin drives that are sitting in a desk drawer. Some ransomware has a time delay before activating, keeping a historic backup (a year old or more along with a couple of more current off-line backups is my choice and I image (not clone) a computer's OS drive before I decommission it and store it on yet another offline drive. That saves the question of; did I miss that photo that never made it out off some sub folder on the OS drive. Macrium allows for image browsing and selected file restoration All in all the docks are highly useful and since I'm about to buy another Voyager (for a friend), seemed like a good time to do a review.

I brought two cheaper Chinese made SATA/IDE kits to transfer files from an old hard drive to my new computer, they burnt out within seconds of switching them on, wires smokes and cables fused together. I then came across this baby. Well made, very easy to use. It cost the same as the two cheap useless ones I brought. Quality product, wish I'd seen this first. Wish I could give it more than 5 stars. You'll need to buy a 8 shaped cable to connect for power, it doesn't come with one, quess that's because plugs are different the world over. Don't buy Chinese electrics, buy quality it's cheaper in the long run.

Great product! Helped me retrieve old photos and documents from old laptops which stopped working.

Works well - very pleased

Mi è arrivato puntuale sulla data prevista, purtroppo il cavo di alimentazione ha la spina di tipo anglosassone. Manca l'adattatore per Italia e non riesco ancora a utilizzarlo.

Product works as advertised, setup was fast and simple works great!