Question 1

I have a crashed computer.  Electrical portion burned out.  The hard drive appears fine.  Can I use this to recover and transfer files and programs off the old hard drive to the new computer?

Accepted Answer

I also have a laptop that crashed. Now I want to put a larger drive in my laptop (formatted put plank) will it boot from the old drive in the docking station?  Will it copy the boot partitions so I can boot my laptop? (How can I boot without an os?)  About the cloning part, will it clone all the partitions on the drive OR just one partitions?

Question 2

Will this work as a way to connect two drives to my PC or Raspberry Pi at one time or does this only work as a drive cloning tool?

Accepted Answer

It allows you to do both.  Add two external drives to your computer and optionally to clone drives as well.  But beware, if you're copying thousands of files, or gigabytes of data in a single copy, it tends to "time out" and lose it's USB connection, i.e. the computer thinks you unplugged the drives.  It works well with smaller, shorter bursts of activity.

Question 3

Does this unit work with OSX?

Accepted Answer

Just plug and play. Never had any issues with them. I've even used the clone function on the OSX hard drive w/ boot camp partition and it worked like a champ.

Question 4

is this compatible with mac os yosemite?

Accepted Answer

Don't know specifically about Mac or os version, but the device is just another USB storage device which should work on a Mac. Only compatibility issue may be the format on the connected hard drives.

Question 5

What is the maximum size HDD that this works with?

Accepted Answer

Documentation says up to 4TB. I haven't used it with anything larger that 2TB so far.

Question 6

I know one button backup requires a destination as big or bigger than the source drive but will the included software running on my PC allow for copying of all needed bits like hidden files and keys from a mostly empty source disc to a slightly smaller target disc??

Thanks

Accepted Answer

It should but I was not too impressed with the software included.  If you want a full copy (mirror) of your hard drive I would recommend using forensic software to create a ISO file of your hard drive and then using OSFmount to access the files.  Thats what I had did to backup a hard drive on the external sata.  Worked perfectly of course using forensic software is time consuming you at least know you are getting EVERY file backed up.

Question 7

Can it clone a PGP encrypted HD (source) or do you need to unencrypt it before the cloning?

Accepted Answer

I try to clone unencrypted hard drive with win 7 and didn't work,  Acronis true image make it happen.

Question 8

Is this compatible with both mechanical and SSD drives and from one to another?

Accepted Answer

Yes, that is what I did when I used it.

Questions & Answers