Support USB2/3 attached HDD Docking stations (HDD > 2 TB)?

[Nice Monkey]

Does Q10 Pro support the attachment via USB 2/3 of HDD Docking Stations? A USB Docking Station not to be confused with an USB HDD Enclosure.
For a HDD below 2 TB there is no difference in support requirements and it should work, but above 2 TB a Docking requires support of GPT Initiated drives just like the one which is used Internally. A Docking is meant to support any physical drive bought or reused straight away. Read my tutorial if you don't understand the difference first.

See attachments for examples how these HDD Dockings look like. There are single port dockings  but also verslons  supporting up to 4 HDD in a single unit.  The last one is great to reduce cabling for USB and power (integrated USB3 hub). It is good to realize that any Himedia Q10 is turned into a HDD Docking just by connecting the USB3 Slave port to any USB3 Host.
Connect any (old) Q10 unit via the Slave Port to a new Q10 Pro Host port and you have the setup with an USB3 attached HDD Docking. Be sure to have a working Internal HDD bigger than 2 TB and you are all set to test this.

I am considering using Q10 pro as a combined media player and as a NAS using a 4-port USB3 Docking. Very cheap setup compared to using an extra NAS, a lot cheaper on power, and far easier to setup too (Samba Server included). Not RAID/JBOD but individual drives just powering up when being accessed.  This will do for many as an almost for free NAS alternative . Performance wise USB3 should do just fine or even better than a cheap dedicated NAS. Potentially one could connect 13 drives 8 TB each to a single Q10, but 5x 2 => 8 TB already makes a nice NAS using available drives. In fact they can be any size individually again in contrary to a real NAS.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[bubblegum57]

I had a similar idea, to connect a docking station directly to my Syno DS212j,
 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00D1NR9MA?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00 every now & again, the connection would drop out.
After several emails to Inatek, they decided conecting to a NAS was not supported.

I then tried to use it to clone a drive this didn't work, & I sent it back.

[futeko.com]

Does Q10 Pro support the attachment via USB 2/3 of HDD Docking Stations?

We will test when we have a Pro sample, but it should support no probs.

[futeko.com]

HiMedia say docking stations are supported.

[Nice Monkey]

HiMedia say docking stations are supported.

Sounds good. They said this specifically also using HDD above 2 TB capacity as this is where Android boxes typically have problems?
It requires GPT support via USB which to be honest I have seen only  working on W7/8/10 myself. Never on a Media Player or NAS. Tried quite a few.

Below 2 TB they work for sure as there is no difference with an External USB drive. Still looking forward to see your test result.

[futeko.com]

HiMedia say docking stations are supported.

Sounds good. They said this specifically also using HDD above 2 TB capacity as this is where Android boxes typically have problems?
It requires GPT support via USB which to be honest I have seen only  working on W7/8/10 myself. Never on a Media Player or NAS. Tried quite a few.

Below 2 TB they work for sure as there is no difference with an External USB drive. Still looking forward to see your test result.

We will test when we have production samples (a couple of weeks away..). Himedia said yes for bigger than 2TB, but there have been occasions when they say yes and don't entirely understand the question. The only way to know for sure is to test.