[ceez]

Hello everyone.

I've been thinking about purchasing a HDD duplicator/dock to image customer drives onto new/larger ones without the need of using ghost. It can take ghost almost 5 hours to clone a hd with 50gigs of data (including OS & programs).

So before I go and invest in one of these I wonder if anyone uses one and can either recommend or shoudl I stick with ghost.

These are some of the ones I am looking at:

http://www.tigerdire...725279&csid=_21
http://www.tigerdire...=86785&csid=_21
http://www.tigerdire...9295&CatId=1264


Thanks

[jaclaz]

ceez, on 25 August 2011 - 11:52 AM, said:

Hello everyone.

I've been thinking about purchasing a HDD duplicator/dock to image customer drives onto new/larger ones without the need of using ghost. It can take ghost almost 5 hours to clone a hd with 50gigs of data (including OS & programs).

So before I go and invest in one of these I wonder if anyone uses one and can either recommend or shoudl I stick with ghost.

These are some of the ones I am looking at:

http://www.tigerdire...725279&csid=_21
http://www.tigerdire...=86785&csid=_21
http://www.tigerdire...9295&CatId=1264


Thanks

The first two listed seem to me VERY like docking stations and completely UNLIKE hd cloning stations.

So, once left the first two alone, being (notoriously) cheap , I would rather save US$ 80 and get this:
http://www.startech....Dock~UNIDUPDOCK

And also leave this (cheaper) thingy here alone:
http://www.lindy.ie/...ives/43112.html

A "cloning" station without a display is as useful to a technician as a bicycle it is to a fish.

Or go for the traditional design (and known producer):
http://www.addonics....ator/HDUS35.asp

Personally, if you are using it professionally, I would suggest this model:
http://www.addonics....or/HDUSI325.asp

and think, for a difference of 50 bucks to get maybe the bigger brother
http://www.addonics....HDUSI325AES.asp

See comparison table:
http://www.addonics....parison.asp#one

jaclaz

This post has been edited by jaclaz: 25 August 2011 - 12:17 PM

[allen2]

To my knowledge, all of those duplicator would take more time to copy a hd to another as they copy all the drive and not what you put on the drive (they don't see if the drive is formated and if a sector is allocated before copying).
As ghost is a little more clever it should only copy the stored data and not also the free space.
Also recent drives should perform a lot better than 10GB/hour when imaging. When using 2 sata drive (ghosting one to another) , you should get about 70GB/hour, if using usb2 drive then it should be only about a third.

This post has been edited by allen2: 25 August 2011 - 01:46 PM

[jaclaz]

allen2, on 25 August 2011 - 01:45 PM, said:

To my knowledge, all of those duplicator would take more time to copy a hd to another as they copy all the drive and not what you put on the drive (they don't see if the drive is formated and if a sector is allocated before copying).
As ghost is a little more clever it should only copy the stored data and not also the free space.
Also recent drives should perform a lot better than 10GB/hour when imaging. When using 2 sata drive (ghosting one to another) , you should get about 70GB/hour, if using usb2 drive then it should be only about a third.

Sure they are "cloning" in a dd-like or "forensically sound" manner.

It all depends on what you actually want as a result, what you get with ghost (unless you do a dd-like clone) is NOT a clone, it is halfway a clone and halfway a backup of the data.



you won't have on the copy deleted files, lost clusters, etc., etc.

Example (review of the startech):
http://www.geardiary...ive-duplicator/

Quote

For the first test I used two 80GB SATA laptop drives which was an image I was working on for my training department. The drive was setup with 3 factory partitions and a single boot Windows XP OS. I connected the drives and fired up the device and selected the default option 1 to copy HDD. I hit enter and it started the duplication job. The device does a quick scan of the drives and starts a completion meter in percentage complete. After about 20 minutes an alarm sounded to alert me that the copy process was done. I powered down the device, popped the destination drive in the laptop and powered up. The laptop started up flawlessly without a hitch. All partitions copied right over and the drive was a 100% clone of the original Source drive. One step process about 20 minutes from start to finish with no PC. Could not get any easier than that.

Real life speed (laptop SATA) about 3x80Gb = 240 Gb/hour or about 4Gb/min.

The top speed depends on the drives obviously.

jaclaz

[ceez]

lol to the bike to fish comment and cloning pic!

thank you jaclaz for the extensize information, I had seen http://www.startech....Dock~UNIDUPDOCK but the reviews were not so great. some people complained that it would take longer than theing a ghost clone. and yes, a duplicator without a screen is useless.

@allen, I dont know if the copy the 'white space', I would hope not cause that would just be a waste of time of they enginered them like that.

Let me see if I continue the good old ghost way or invest in one of these hd dups.


thanks again guys.

[bonestonne]

http://www.diskology.com/

I have a Disk Jockey Pro, and I could not tell you how many times it's saved client computers.

Oh yeah, you get what you pay for. I cannot think of a single product that can match the Disk Jockey Pro.

On the software end of things, Paragon Partition Manager can do what you're looking to do as well.

Ditch Ghost, and pick up Paragon, get a Disk Jockey Pro for a backup solution. You'll be set. Both solutions are faster than Ghost, but beware, failing disks will take a very long time, and can give you untold amounts of trouble.

[jaclaz]

ceez, on 02 September 2011 - 02:13 PM, said:

thank you jaclaz for the extensize information, I had seen http://www.startech....Dock~UNIDUPDOCK but the reviews were not so great. some people complained that it would take longer than theing a ghost clone. and yes, a duplicator without a screen is useless.

Hmm, I guess, as said, that it all depends on the "ghost" (or other software) program settings, and on the amount on actual data on the disk.

Let's take an "average" (nowadays) 500 Gb hard disk.
Let's do a fork between a "home user" and a "work PC".
The home user - on average - will in most cases download to it 1/3 of the Internet , and the disk (and the filesystem) will hold probably 400 Gb or data or so.
The work user - on average - will have on it MS office and another couple of programs specific to his/her trade/business to which you can add a year of e-mails, let's say 4 Gb, a few games he/she downloaded to entertain the children when at home and a few "dumps" of adigital camera, in total he will have no more than, say, 80 Gb of data.

No matter HOW (in the sense if through a hardware or software approach), with the same tool:

• A dd-like copy or image will take the same time for both.
  
• A dd-like copy BUT skipping unused sectors will take 1/5th or 1/4th the time nedded for the first for the second disk.

Just to give you another example, this one:
http://www.jharddriv...ator_ninja.html
though hardware based allows for different imaging modes, including one for skipping unallocated sectors.
Such a thing will be way faster than any software.

As always happens, it comes with a string attached: the price tag.

jaclaz

[networks]

I know this thread is getting a tad old however I use the StarTech SATDOCK22RE almost every day. http://www.startech....ock~SATDOCK22RE I have tested this duplicator it doesn't grow your partition like ghost does but it does make a complete bit stream copy of the source drive to the destination drive and if you run an MD5 hash it will match if that is the level you need. I have seen it copy a 40GB drive in less than 15min I have done 80GB drives and it's been approx 30min or less. I regularly do 500GB drives and they take 1hour to 1hour 10min in most cases. I have done this with other programs on many PC's with the on-board sata connectors and with ghost which has been much slower in my experience. I do wish the display was better ie: LCD with percentage but it works once you use it. I have gotten used to it myself. I own 4 of them for the money its worth it to me. You can use many programs to "grow" the partition after the copy such as Acronis and many many others.

This post has been edited by networks: 24 September 2011 - 06:49 PM