Fast Safe Disk Cloning

Indeed? I'd like someone from the USA to buy me one lol - over here those are the same price - just change the $ to a £...not cool
 
I use HDClone Professional and a pair of USB 3.0 docks. The transfer speeds are amazing and I couldn't be happier. I have it hooked up to a live Windows machine that I use for invoicing purposes. It's the computer I'm using to type this message right now as a matter of fact. You don't need a dedicated computer to do this so long as you've got enough power. My rig has a 4770k Core i7 processor, 16GB DDR3 2400Mhz RAM, 256GB Samsung 850 Pro SSD, Corsair AX1200i PSU, MSI graphics card (Nvidia GTX750) and a MSI Gaming 7 series motherboard. I have some PCI-e x1 USB 3.0 cards to support the docks for mirroring, data backup, and low level formatting procedures it handles on a daily basis.
 
SpaceSquad said:
Why's that?

I am going to guess you mean in a data recovery situation...which I would agree with you and I do not use it in those situations.
Click to expand...
There is no way to know where you are in the duplication process and my experience is it tends to fail with healthy drive transfers...plus it is slow (limited to 55MB/second as a max)

Slaters Kustum Machines said:
Is there a benefit to this over using ddrescue?
Click to expand...

Yes and no.

Startech has a marked source and destination to help avoid accidentally cloning the wrong way
Startech is really simple to use, no need to understand linux
Startech is portable, you can easily transport your controlled environment where ever you go

ddrescue has a log file, you don't need to restart from the beginning if you have to restart
ddrescue has a log file, allowing you to run multiple passes to maximize the amount of sectors read

So, if the drive is considered healthy, I'd go with Startech. If the drive is suspected as being bad, ddrescue, if DeepSpar or other data recovery hardware imager is not an option.
 
In my humble experience, duplicators don't work well when dealing with failing hard drives, even the Startech.com ones don't always work. That said, I have not tried the one that lcoughey suggested.

As for custom builds for cloning, we have 4 different boxes setup for cloning (using ddrescue), data recoveries, data transfers, hard drive diagnostic, etc. and I will tell you that the boxes equipped with a good quad core process will out clone (in speed) our other boxes that only have a dual core processor or a older and slower quad core processor. These speeds are based on the results from good or new hard drives that we clone our custom Windows images to. Obviously, speeds will vary depending on the amount of data on the drive and the condition of the drive itself.

Also, if you are using these boxes to run multiple hard drive tests, you will definitely need the better processor.
 
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PCX said:
As for custom builds for cloning, we have 4 different boxes setup for cloning (using ddrescue), data recoveries, data transfers, hard drive diagnostic, etc. and I will tell you that the boxes equipped with a good quad core process will out clone (in speed) our other boxes that only have a dual core processor or a older and slower quad core processor. These speeds are based on the results from good or new hard drives that we clone our custom Windows images to. Obviously, speeds will vary depending on the amount of data on the drive and the condition of the drive itself.

Also, if you are using these boxes to run multiple hard drive tests, you will definitely need the better processor.
Click to expand...
This is what I suspected. Does RAM make much of difference? Say 4 gigs vs 8 or more?
 
altrenda said:
This is what I suspected. Does RAM make much of difference? Say 4 gigs vs 8 or more?
Click to expand...

Honestly, I think they all have about the same amount of memory, so I would not know. I try and remember to check when I get back into the shop.
 
I would have thought RAM not so much as its not necessarily caching much to write to the "good" hard drive. Processing should be pretty much bottlenecked by the failing hard drive rather than processing power. Would I be correct in thinking anything like a c2d onwards with 2gb of ram would be fine for such a job.
 
for fairly healthy drives I just use an older system with 2x esata brackets and HDClone 5 Professional Edition its incredibly simple and fast
 
For healthy drives I use Paragon Hard Disk Manager, works great and has the ability to move to dissimilar hardware and boot fix and allows to expand partitions when moving to a larger drive.
 
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@allanc... the prices have come down a bit which is why I was considering another unit.

@everyoneelse... Obviously we all have different views and experiences with just about everything tech. All I can say is that I have been extremely happy with my unit that has lasted me about 3 years now. It has only not worked doing a copy a few times, but the those hard drives were in pretty bad shape. However, there have been several times when I thought the drive would not copy but after letting it run overnight... success.

If I had a shop, I would definitely look for a more robust KanguruClone or Systor unit. And of course I've used products like ddrescue and other partition clone software. They all work. This is just one more tool in the arsenal.
 
lcoughey said:
When I was referring to Startech, I was thinking more of this - http://ca.startech.com/HDD/Duplicators/sata-hdd-duplicator~SATDUP11IMG. It is a stand alone unit. The toaster model mentioned above is useless, IMHO.
Click to expand...
I purchased the unit based upon your recommendation.
Very pleased so far.
Do you know if the 'erase' function that preps a destination drive for storing images is actually equivalent to a 'wipe'?
I just spoke to StarTech and I did not get a high level of confidence.
 
allanc said:
I purchased the unit based upon your recommendation.
Very pleased so far.
Do you know if the 'erase' function that preps a destination drive for storing images is actually equivalent to a 'wipe'?
I just spoke to StarTech and I did not get a high level of confidence.
Click to expand...

Toss a drive in, run the erase, then do a quick scan with a DR tool.
 
allanc said:
I purchased the unit based upon your recommendation.
Very pleased so far.
Do you know if the 'erase' function that preps a destination drive for storing images is actually equivalent to a 'wipe'?
I just spoke to StarTech and I did not get a high level of confidence.
Click to expand...
What's your average clone/image time?
 
allanc said:
I purchased the unit based upon your recommendation.
Very pleased so far.
Do you know if the 'erase' function that preps a destination drive for storing images is actually equivalent to a 'wipe'?
I just spoke to StarTech and I did not get a high level of confidence.
Click to expand...
I've never tested the erase, but I've been told by Jared at Data-Medics that it works well.
 
lcoughey said:
I've never tested the erase, but I've been told by Jared at Data-Medics that it works well.
Click to expand...
The 'erase' is actually a 'format' (I think).
I copied a couple of files to a 80 Gb SATA drive.
The format [4.5 Format HDD #2 (Setup Image Drive)] ran for less than a minute.
GetDataBack for NTFS was able to recover the files without any issues.
I even ran one of the .exe that I recovered to make sure.
I cannot find any other method in the manual.
Am I possibly doing something wrong?
 
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allanc said:
The 'erase' is actually a 'format' (I think).
I copied a couple of files to a 80 Gb SATA drive.
The format [4.5 Format HDD #2 (Setup Image Drive)] ran for less than a minute.
GetDataBack for NTFS was able to recover the files without any issues.
I even ran one of the .exe that I recovered to make sure.
I cannot find any other method in the manual.
Am I possibly doing something wrong?
Click to expand...
When you get to the erase menu, which option did you choose?
  1. Quick Erase
  2. Full Erase
  3. DoD Erase
  4. Dod EraseComp
  5. Secure Erase
If you do the Quick Erase, it will be just that, Quick. It likely just deletes any MBR/GPT partition information from the drive. Full erase or Secure Erase are the two options I recommend.

You can also edit the system config to allow source drive erasure, as well. This way, you can erase two drives at the same time. You can even flip through the display to see the progress of each drive.

I'm actually more impressed with this unit now.
 
lcoughey said:
When you get to the erase menu, which option did you choose?
  1. Quick Erase
  2. Full Erase
  3. DoD Erase
  4. Dod EraseComp
  5. Secure Erase
If you do the Quick Erase, it will be just that, Quick. It likely just deletes any MBR/GPT partition information from the drive. Full erase or Secure Erase are the two options I recommend.

You can also edit the system config to allow source drive erasure, as well. This way, you can erase two drives at the same time. You can even flip through the display to see the progress of each drive.

I'm actually more impressed with this unit now.
Click to expand...
I am not sure that we are referring to same model :(
The one that I purchased is the unit that you linked to SATDUP11IMG.
I do not see any of the above options.
Here is a paste from the manual:
'
.4 Format HDD #2
Enables you to delete the data on the target drive and prepare it to be a new Image
Library Drive. Follow the below steps to format and create your Image Library Drive.
WARNING! All data stored on the drive connected to the target port will be
deleted.
1.
From the function table, select 4.Image Manager >> 4.Format HDD #2.
2.
Press the okay button to confirm your format.'
 
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