INTRODUCTION

   PC cases offer a large number of HDD trays nowadays allowing people to mount and use several drives without ever having to worry about storage capacity. Still for professionals and even enthusiasts there's no such thing as sufficient storage space and because of that external HDD enclosures offer a good way to expand drive capacity without much hassle. HDD enclosures may not be hard to use and usually it doesn't take long to mount a drive inside but for people looking for the easiest and fastest possible way to use 3.5/2.5" drives nothing beats the simplicity of a HDD/SSD docking station. Docking stations however have evolved quite a bit over the years so dual bay models are not only the easiest way to access two 3.5/2.5" drives but also to clone one onto another and the CR-H236 by CineRAID which we have here with us today is one such model.

   With more than 20+ years of experience in the data storage industry, we know storage. Our parent company Tekram USA was founded in 1990 and was recognized as one of the most influential and famous storage solution providers and manufacturer in Taiwan, when SCSI and cache controller cards were the latest storage controllers. In fact, Tekram was the first company to develop caching disk controllers for the VL-Bus , greatly enhancing system performance back then. Tekram innovations like its bus-mastering enhanced IDE chip, S1040 SCSI controller ASIC have given us the structure and background to always keep advancing with the latest storage developments. During the transition between SCSI and SATA/SAS, Areca Technologies was founded in 1999 with a commitment for the research and development of newer disk array technologies. Using the existing knowledge and experience from Tekram, Areca has been able to continue delivering storage innovations with their own custom ASIC and released the first RAID 6 controller to hit the market. Today, Tekram USA created a division called CineRAID, strategically partnered with Areca Technologies in order to provide creative professionals a broad range of high performance, reliable and low cost disk array solution fully optimized for digital content and streaming media applications.

   CineRAID is a name we've all heard in the past but since it's aimed towards the USA market mostly up to date we never had the opportunity to cooperate with them. The good news is that their product line includes several storage related models manufactured not only from them but also from other companies under Tekram some of which are quite famous around the globe. Getting back to the CR-H236 this is a compact USB 3.0 hot-swap dual bay docking station that features separate power buttons for each drive, SATA III ports (most similar models still feature SATA II) and fully supports UASP under Windows 8/8.1/10 for the best possible read & write performance. You can also use the CR-H236 to easily clone drives up to 6TB in capacity (the target drive always needs to be at least the same capacity as the source) just by pressing a single button. On paper the CR-H236 seems to have it all but is that really the case?

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

The CR-H236 arrived inside a small black box with a product picture at the front, the main product features, company logo, 2D barcode and a drawing of the USA.

The features are also listed on the left side (ignore the capacity line).

A few words about the product are placed at the rear of the box and right above the specifications list and bundle contents.

Two foam pieces and a plastic bag keep the docking station in place.

Contained in the box is the CR-H236 docking station, USB 3.0 cable and the power adapter (USA tips so EU/UK users need an adapter).

THE CR-H236

The CR-H236 is made out of glossy/polished plastic and is rather small measuring just 105mm in length, 117.5mm in width and 76.5mm in height.

It's actually also quite smaller than most docking stations we've used and tested to date including the ICY BOX IB-121CL-U3 by RaidSonic.

The clone button is surrounded by several LEDs used to indicate the number of drives mounted (blue LEDs), drive activity (green LED) and percentage of cloning procedure complete.

There are two hot-swap drive bays at the top of the docking station both of which are tagged.

The USB 3.0 host port is placed at the rear of the device right next to the DC in and on/off switch.

The device sits on four small round rubber feet.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Complicating things is not really our way so our testing procedure will be almost identical to how we test USB 3.0 hubs so once again we will be using Kingston HyperX 120GB SATA III SSDs with every docking station not only so we can max out the performance of our USB 3.0 controller but also to be able to perform every write test required (USB flash drives are not all capable of that). Our standard selection of benchmark suites is used here as well including the famous HD Tach RW (Long Bench 32mb Zones), HD Tune Pro (read/write -when possible- speeds), Sisoftware Sandra Pro (Read/Write speeds), AIDA64 (Linear Read/Random Read), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (100MB/1000MB-read/write speeds) and finally the quite outdated yet highly reliable ATTO 2.47 (Max Read/Max Write speeds). Every test was repeated for a total of 6 times and after that the average (not peak) performance numbers were recorded into our graphs. Like always every test was performed in a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 7 Service Pack 1 with every update installed up to January 8th 2014 (UASP compatible models are tested using a fresh Windows 8.1 installation on a Plextor m6e).

   For the cloning tests we really tried to cover almost every scenario possible and so we ended up using two identical Kingston HyperX 120GB SSDs, two Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB HDDs and two Seagate Constellation ES.2 3TB HDDs. Of course due to the very long time required to copy each drive onto the other and also since cloning is done without using a computer the tests were completed only once each and then recorded to our charts.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

TEST RESULTS – DISK CLONING SPEED

CONCLUSION

   The strange thing about this review is not so much that we're testing a product made by a manufacturer unknown to most of you but the fact that we've been using HDD docking stations for years now and unfortunately not even once did we fall on one made by them. Sure the CR-H236 is not a fancy device and build quality is not the best possible but it's compact, outperforms every HDD docking station we've used to date (especially with UASP enabled) and can also clone drives quite faster. Unfortunately we're not even close to what I’d call acceptable since you still need roughly 6 hours to clone a 3TB drive 100% filled with data to the very last byte but since this is a standalone feature that doesn't require a PC it can still come in handy. Overall we enjoyed testing the CR-H236 although i have to admit that we still don't know how the separate power buttons work (or if they even exist since this feature was only listed online) so we may update this review after hearing back from CineRAID.

   CineRAID products are not listed inside the EU and as we speak your best chance in finding them inside the USA is directly from their website which currently lists the CR-H236 for USD79.99 a price which is not bad at all if you take into account the performance difference with other similar models. Of course HDD docking stations may be very easy to use but they do leave the drive unprotected so in some ways a closed enclosure would be better but this has a lot to do with the number of drives you need to have access to at any given time. In the end however nothing beats the simplicity of HDD docking stations and since the CR-H236 is the fastest one in our charts and can also be used to clone drives (again faster than any other in our charts) it gets our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Overall Build Quality
- Compact Size
- Top of the Charts Performance
- USB 3.0 & UASP
- Dual Docking Station
- One Button Drive Cloning
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Again Cloning Procedure Takes Long To Complete