SDOCKU33EF, UNIDOCKU33 with 18TB 3.5" drives

Hi can I put 18TB 3.5" SATA drives in any SDOCKU33EF or UNIDOCKU33
For example with Toshiba HDWG51JUZSVA and MG08ACA18TE.

Hello @huke,

Thank you for taking the time to post on the Startech.com Community!

While SDOCKU33EF and UNIDOCKU33 do not have a maximum supported drive capacity, an important factor to keep in mind for compatibility is what sector size the drive is using. While most SATA drives use a 512 byte sector size, some larger capacity drives may use a 4Kn sector size which is not compatible with all drive docks or adapters. Whether one of our drive docks or adapters supports 4Kn can be found in the technical specifications on the product page.

From the information I can find, the MG08ACA18TE seems to use 4Kn sectors and HDWG51JUZSVA seems to use 512 sectors.

SDOCKU33EF supports both 512 and 4Kn sectors and will be compatible with both drives. However, UNIDOCKU33 unfortunately does not support 4Kn sectors and would not be compatible with MG08ACA18TE, and would only be expected to work with HDWG51JUZSVA.

Please let me know if there is anything else I could help with!

Lukas T

I’ve connected the Toshiba MG10ACA20TE (20 TB) to both Startech SDOCKU33EF and USB312SAT3, so my guess it that they probably will work with the 22 TB version (MG10AFA22TE), which is the biggest right now.

Hello @huke,

Looking over the information available from Toshiba’s datasheet for MG10AFA22TE, compared to the MG10ACA20TE you have working with SDOCKU33EF and USB312SAT3 the only difference I can see is the larger capacity, so I would expect MG10AFA22TE to work as well.

Lukas T