StarTech.com Standalone Dual Bay M.2 SATA/NVMe Duplicator/Eraser, HDD/SSD Cloner/Wiper for M.2 PCIe AHCI/NVMe/SATA, 2.5/3.5in Drives, Hard Drive Sanitizer/Copier, TAA (SM2DUPE11)

I wanted a standalone duplicator to get away from having to have a full PC "disk lab" taking up a desk just to clone some disks from time to time. I first bought a cheap duplicator to see if it might be usable despite the clunkiness... and that was a waste of $100.While it would be difficult to justify most techie types to invest in anything at this level for their own personal tool shed at home, what you get for the money is much more acceptable than the big nothing you get with the other clunky clone devices on Amazon for $50~$200. There are other more expensive options like a Kanguru if you need to clone a bunch of drives, but for a small shop this is a great device.This is solid in functionality and quality- though as other reviews point out, there are still some things that would make it better feature-wise that might be in those more expensive devices, but this is less than half of the price of some of those other options.

We were looking for a stand alone device that could clone SATA and SSD to M.2 and this does it well.Cloning a 500GB SSD to 1 TB M.2 took about 17:54 using the (Copy system & files).Cloning a 500GB SSD to 1 TB M.2 took about 1:06:24 using the (Copy the whole HDD).Other settings will enable you to do other options.We also used it to wipe the old drives and it is great to have (NIST SP 800-88 Rev 1 - Purge)Their support department is responsive and a human being actually answer the phone.

We bought this unit specifically because it supported multiple M.2 drive formats, i.e. 2230, 2242, 2260, etc. We frequently deal with multiple sizes and move between them often. Couple with the fact that you can transfer from a spindle drive directly to any M.2 size made this seem to be the perfect choice, even at an exorbitant price.What they DON"T tell you in the manual is that in order to switch between sizes, the unit must literally be disassembled... for no other reason than to move the rubber posts used to retain the drive. Absolutely ridiculous. A much better solution would have been to simply use standard M.2 screws which are easily sourced. To add insult to injury, the (2) rubber posts provided are NOT available as a part. In other words, when you tear one going through the process of moving it, you can't get a replacement.What follows is the transcript of a tech support chat in which they explain the necessary steps to move the rubber posts:"[4/22/2024, 11:33:14 AM] Carlos: Even though Im not able to try by myself, I can completely understand the trouble this may cause.And again, you are correct, as per the recommended steps to do this which are the following:Remove the Phillips head screws on both sides of the LED housingWith both screws from the sides of the LED housing removed, gently lift the housing away from the rest of the productRemove the Phillips head screw from the bottom of the drive tray(s) you wish to move the rubber drive holder ofHolding both ends of the drive tray, remove the drive tray from the rest of the product.Pinch the top of the rubber drive holder and pull it through the drive tray to remove itReposition the rubber drive holder to the desired depth hole and push it through the bottom of the drive trayGently replace the drive tray in its original position Secure the drive tray to the body of the product using the washer and screw removed in Step 3Return the LED housing to its original position and secure it using the screws removed in Step 1It seems the drive tray should be removed unfortunately"I STRONGLY suggest you look elsewhere for an SATA/M.2 cloning device.

It's a nice looking well built unit but it's important to know that it doesn't resize partitions which means there is extra work required if the source an destination aren't the same size.1. Cloning to a smaller drive... It can't, even if the data will fit, and even if you pre-shrink and move the source partitions. We often replace hard drives with smaller SSD's, this won't do that.2. Cloning to a larger drive... You must manually move and grow the partitions on a computer using third party software after cloning.We wanted this to be a time saver vs. using cloning software, booting from USB, setting BIOS modes, etc. but ultimately it just adds extra steps unless you are cloning same size drives, which we almost never are. Such a shame because it seems like some extra work in the firmware, maybe a 'Smart-Clone' mode, could have made this a real gem and worthy of it's hefty price tag. We have decided to keep it as it's an interesting tool and we hope to find enough tasks that it is capable of doing in order to constitute it's expense.There is percentage clone feature that I find somewhat odd, but interesting. This is the only way we've managed to clone a larger drive to a smaller one... but the results were sketchy. Once we cloned 22% of a 1TB HDD to a 240GB SSD after first shrinking the partitions. It booted but the computer then thought the 240GB SSD was a 1TB drive and we were unable to create or resize partitions. I understand why, and won't go into that here, but am sharing this information because the documentation says nothing about the percentage feature. I can envision situations where it might be useful. Erasing the drive with the cloner made it usable again. The drive erasing feature is pretty handy.Under the hood this thing probably has a couple hundred bucks worth of decent components including a Zynq-7000 ARM Cortex CPU, 128 MB of DDR3, and 16 MB of Flash for the firmware... so it seems respectable. There's also RS232 and Micro-SD headers inside, and a jumper labeled SD that might enable/disable Micro-SD Card functions. The photo in the listing shows a Micro-SD card slot on the back of the unit but the one we received doesn't have that, firmware updates must be loaded via a connected drive (as per the utility menu).Startech, is it possible for you to implement a smart-clone feature that will resize destination paritions like most cloning software does? That would be a huge help!