Best option for external dock

[seagatedoge]

Hello,
I don't have much experience to do with external docking of drives. I intend to put 2 SSDs and 2 HDDs into a dock that will plug in to a laptop. Here is what I have been looking at: ORICO 2.5 & 3.5 inch SATA2.0 USB3.0 1 to 3 Clone External HDD Dock
Will I be able to boot from a docked drive?
Will I lose SSD speed or latency using USB 3.0?
Do you think this is a workable product for my intended use? (I will not be travelling with it).
I saw there are boxes likes this one—
ICY BOX IB-545SSK CD-ROM Space HDD Mobile Rack—are there ones that can contain both SSDs and HDDs?
I had to enable AHCI in my BIOS to detect the SSDs; would I do this in the laptop BIOS or would the dock manage this?
Thank you for your wisdom.

 

[ArtPog]

We've used a number of Orico USB external enclosures and by & large have been quite satisfied with them. But we've never used this particular model.

From your objective it seems like the Orico will fill the bill for you EXCEPT your requirement (if it is a "requirement") that you can boot from a drive installed in one of the bays of the unit. This is an iffy proposition. To a large extent it depends upon the disk-cloning program; if the OS on the external drive has been the recipient of the cloned contents of an INTERNALLY-CONNECTED bootable drive, it MIGHT boot from the externally-connected drive in the unit. Again, it depends mainly on the disk-cloning program used for the cloning operation. My understanding is that this unit includes a disk-cloning program but I have no idea at to whether it would create a bootable drive installed in one of the bays. Probably not would be my guess but it's only a guess. If this is an important consideration for you I would urge you to contact Orico to obtain this info.

Also, my understanding is that this model's ON-OFF power switch controls the power for all four bays as a unit. You cannot power individual bays. For most users I would guess this is not a negative - I would guess that most users would welcome this type of powering the device. But some users desire powering of individual bays.

 

[seagatedoge]

We've used a number of Orico USB external enclosures and by & large have been quite satisfied with them. But we've never used this particular model.

From your objective it seems like the Orico will fill the bill for you EXCEPT your requirement (if it is a "requirement") that you can boot from a drive installed in one of the bays of the unit. This is an iffy proposition. To a large extent it depends upon the disk-cloning program; if the OS on the external drive has been the recipient of the cloned contents of an INTERNALLY-CONNECTED bootable drive, it MIGHT boot from the externally-connected drive in the unit. Again, it depends mainly on the disk-cloning program used for the cloning operation. My understanding is that this unit includes a disk-cloning program but I have no idea at to whether it would create a bootable drive installed in one of the bays. Probably not would be my guess but it's only a guess. If this is an important consideration for you I would urge you to contact Orico to obtain this info.

Also, my understanding is that this model's ON-OFF power switch controls the power for all four bays as a unit. You cannot power individual bays. For most users I would guess this is not a negative - I would guess that most users would welcome this type of powering the device. But some users desire powering of individual bays.

Thanks for your informative answer.

June 2019 update:
Orico bay continues to function well in a desktop setting. When plugging into a Surface Pro, the touchscreen becomes spotty in its responsiveness. Only a reboot fixes it with the bay unplugged.