I have an iDock C10 and overall am very happy with it since it switches quickly between my laptop and desktop displays when I press the dock button to switch back and forth.
However, I have encountered one annoying issue where at times all my USB hard drives (and also my NVMe SSD drives) disconnect and reconnect from a powered USB hub.
The biggest problem is that during this time when the computer gets “tied up” reconnecting all these devices and waiting for the hard drives to respond (maybe 1 or 2 minutes), the PC hangs and I cannot type anything or move the mouse for this timespan of 1 to 2 minutes.
This issue typically happens a few times a day (every day but one this week), sometimes less. I have not noticed it today.
I have had this same Sabrent 16 port powered USB hub and this disconnecting & reconnecting issue which results in hanging issue only started after getting the C10 dock which is connected to my desktop PC using the USB host connection.
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I noted above that “I am mostly happy with the C10 (especially if I can figure out this USB disconnecting and reconnecting issue)”, but I should also note that I did have one other scary issue ONLY once so far, which I will post in a separate thread.
That other issue is a video issue which happened only once in the past 5 days of using the C10 all day:
Yesterday (after playing a video clip) late in the day where 1 of the 2 monitors’ displays became all snowy (no image displayed, not black but 'snowy). The other monitor was still fine during this issue. It was only happening on the desktop PC, but then suddenly the laptop stopped displaying both screens.
I rebooted the desktop to resolve the issue, but I have had this desktop 2 years & 4 months and this issue never happened till now when i got the dock.
If this becomes a common or more frequent issue, then this will be a deal breaker and would prevent me from keeping the dock.
From desktop to the dock’s 2 video inputs, I am using an 8-foot Monoprice Ultra 8K Premium High Speed HDMI Cable and a CableCreation 8K DisplayPort Cable 10 FT
From laptop to the dock, I am using the included USB-C cable.
About the USB hard drives issue, you mean there have a USB hub connected to our C10 then they plug into the hub, right？ Kindly please try the hard drives directly connect to C10 and bypass the hub to check if it still have the same issue or not?
For the video issue, happened on which monitor,is HDMI out 1 or out 2? Could you try use the included HDMI cable or DP cable to test( desktop input group: DP in corresponds to out 1 and HDMI in corresponds to out 2).
Thanks Kevin. 1. Hard drives reconnecting issue (SOLVED NOW - had to buy extra PCIe-based USB-C controller card though):
To answer your question - No, the USB hub is not connected to the C10 dock since I only want and only need access to them when I am using the desktop PC.
So the hub was plugged into a USB port on the desktop.
However, I solved this ‘hard drives reconnecting’ issue by buying a PCIe based 2 port USB-C controller card for my desktop and then and connecting ONLY the C10 dock to this card (to keep the USB hub with the hard drives and the C10 dock on SEPARATE USB controllers.
Since installing the controller card and using that for only the C10 dock, the hard drives stopped reconnecting.
The controller card cost $53, but I got $10 off. Not exactly a cheap solution considering I got the dock for only $149.99 after discount and coupon, but to me it is money well spent to have solved the issue.
2. The ‘snow’ video issue happened on HDMI out 1.
It has not happened since that one time.
However, yesterday monitor 1 video did not work right (screen was all blue I believe with no content) when I first started using the system in the AM.
To get video again, I then either disconnected the USB host cable or disconnected the HDMI out cable from the dock and reconnected it and the video has been fine since.
Not 100% sure what the sequence was or if it was the HDMI cable or USB host cable that I unplugged and plugged back in.
So as of today, things are working well with my C10 now, so long as the video output issue does not happen again. Hopefully it was a one-time thing.