Stored data in hard drives are precious for regular personal computer users. More so, for any business that makes use of computers. In this day and age, that probably includes all
businesses in different industries. A hard drive duplicator is a handy tool to have for anyone who wants their data stored in a safe place. Who wouldn’t?
Industries that greatly benefit from hard drive duplicators are:
- Dealers
- System builders
- Data recovery departments
- Management Information Systems/Information Technology departments
- Law enforcement
Common uses of hard drive duplicators are:
- Forensic Hard Drive Acquisition
- Professional Data Recovery
- Computer Production
- System Maintenance
- Hard Drive Integrity Testing
- Data Wiping for Security
Law enforcement makes use of hard drive duplicators for forensic purposes. Some models are specifically made for this. Those models can scan for words, phone numbers, addresses or any other information in an instant.
Computer technicians can also use hard drive duplicators to easily swap out failing hard disk drives with fresh rebuilt drives.
What is a hard drive duplicator?
Hard drive duplicators are stand-alone devices. They are used to clone hard drives quickly, easily and accurately. This device can be used to transfer data from one hard drive to another or simply store data as archives.
A single hard drive duplicator can be a tower-like module that is capable of cloning several hard drives at once. Some models can even copy 29 hard drives at once. They aren’t limited to computer hard drives. They can clone mobile handheld devices like cellular phones and BlackBerrys as well.
It doesn’t matter if your hard drives are IDE, SATA or in RAID arrays. They can be partitioned or not, a hard drive duplicator can clone your hard drive much faster than a computer can. These are also operating system (OS) independent. Hard drive duplicators work equally well cloning any OS environment. Windows, Macintosh, UNIX and Linux, it doesn’t matter. It can clone data on any hard drive. This includes hard drives from older non-working machines.
Clone and not simply copy files. Hard drive duplicators make exact copies of the hard disk including free space but without the bad sectors. Some hard drive duplicators, in fact, allow renaming partitions or remapping drives to avoid corrupted areas that might lead to loss of data.
How is a hard drive duplicator used?
Gone are the days of connecting another hard drive to the machine hosting the master drive as means of transferring data. There are external drives, USB drives and CD/DVD’s as means of saving data. Their capacity and speed however, do not come close to that of hard drive duplicators.
Using a hard drive duplicator is as easy as 1, 2, and 3. Some models require the hard drive to be removed and then inserted into the duplicator. Some only need a cable to plug the duplicator into the machine.
How fast do hard drive duplicators copy data?
The speed does depend on the model. There are duplicators that can copy Windows Operating Systems in just 2 minutes.
Using the 40-pin IDE interface, some models can reach transfer speeds as fast as 3GB/min (gigabytes per minute). Other models can go as fast as 18 GB/min. The speed remains the same even if the duplicator is copying multiple drives.
How much do hard drive duplicators cost?
Prices of these devices vary between models and according to feature. Features to be considered are:
- Capacity
- Speed
- Type of hard drive connections
- Physical design
- Electrical design
Personal portable hard drive duplicators can cost less than US$100. The price range for mass hard drive duplicators start at around US$500 and can go all the way up to several thousand dollars. But hey, it’s a small price to pay for some industries that have several years’ worth of work stored in hard disk drives.
