Hard Drive Duplicators

 

Hard drive cloning can be as easy as ABC with the use of hard drive duplicating devices.  These cloning devices are available in portable forms, which makes it more efficient and easy accessed to perform duplication functions.  In addition, these devices operate in high speeds making it easier to duplicate a hard drive.  Examples of these devices include Echo Ultra-Portable Hard Drive, Solitaire Hand Held Drive, Solitaire Forensics, CloneCard PSMCIA Adapter and Omniclone.  This essay deals with describing some of these devices, how they function and revealing important characteristics of these tools.

TEcho

The Echo, a portable hard drive duplicator that also easily fits in ones pocket is a new less expensive devices.  The main feature in this device include:

-         Clones from one master drive to one target drive.

-         Speed that exceeds 5550MB/min

-         Clones between deferent size and geometry drives, e.g. from a 15 head 6GB to a 16 head 60 GB drive.

-         Uses Intelligent cloning system- CleverClone technology-which supports intelligent cloning of FAT16 and FAT32. 

-         Compaq Diagnostic-supports the Compaq diagnostics partition.

-         Scalable cloning and Mirror Copy, a simple sector by sector coping

-         Flash Memory-easy to upgrade via the web, uploaded through a parallel port cable.

Another portable hard drive duplicator is The Solitaire, which combines the latest technology and extreme efficiency in design to achieve IDE data transfer at an extremely high speed.  The Solitaire has most of the qualities in the Echo device with a very high speed, that is 975 MB/min and a more reliable and versatile data transfer.  While losing only a small amount of speed, one can actually gain time by using this device with a built-in capability of running data transfer through a parallel cable or optional CloneCard.  In this case, one does no longer have to open up an entire hard drive to clone but one simply attaches the parallel cable and hits the CLONE NOW sign.

The Solitaire Forensic kit is specially used in forensic fields where it’s simply used in forensic computer data.  This is also a hand held portable device that is used in disk drive data seizure.  This device has the same speed as the Solitaire, which is more that 975 MB/min.  With it’s lightweight, portability, “rugged construct and field-tested capabilities, the Solitaire Forensic System is simply the best forensic data collection available. This device contains:

-         Exact Drive information Capture

-         Hardcopy on-site reporting

-         Unidirectional Data Transfer.

-         Parallel ort Copy Capability.

The CloneCard PSMCIA Adapter is used for notebook high-speed hard drive cloning. Its important feature include:

-         High Speed- Up to 10 times faster than traditional parallel port cloning.

-         Bi-Directional-Clone to and from a laptop computer

-         Easy use-no need for a special laptop drive adapters

Cloning using CloneCard TM is done by:

1)                          Simple inserting the supplied PCMCIA card into the laptop and connecting the other end to the Target position of one Solitaire.

2)                          Boot the laptop with the supplied CloneCard client floppy

3)                          Proceed to operate the Solitaire as if a regular drive is connected at the target position.

The OmniClone is another device that comes with different speeds ranging from 750 MB/min to 850MB/min.  Their target of cloning also ranges from 2 targets to 15 targets of clones.  They also perform diagnostic functions.  Some of OmniClones are portables, other are not.