# Hard Drive Duplicator, example: AHDDUB100



## rabidx (Aug 21, 2007)

Does anyone know if using a drive duplicator,such as the Aluratek External SATA Portable External Hard Drive Duplicator AHDDUB100, would work in replicating the existing internal TIVO drive?

Thanks


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

That's a lot of money to spend to avoid using a computer to do it.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

unitron said:


> That's a lot of money to spend to avoid using a computer to do it.


So spend less money.

I have this one: 
http://serialgear.com/serialgear_us...7,170,161,2345,140,177,141,142&cats=111,99202

I have used it for connecting to two disks at once, but I didn't try cloning with it. It hosted my NAS drives and a DVD-burner while the enclosures were "up on the rack" and I just used it to check that the new 2TB drive for my Premiere is OK.

It seems to me that it has to do a bit-level copy so it should work if you use two of the same model drives, and even could work if if you have two drives of the same sizes.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

netringer said:


> So spend less money.
> 
> I have this one:
> http://serialgear.com/serialgear_us...7,170,161,2345,140,177,141,142&cats=111,99202
> ...


Or you could just use "dd" and spend the money on beer.


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## rallykeeper (Oct 30, 2009)

A cheap option by Calvary showed up on NewEgg today and I'd been looking for a drive dock in any event for other purposes. 

If I could get the drive duplicator to also help out with a TiVo hard drive upgrade and transfer, that would be be an added benefit. 

I'm willing to be a guinea pig with this device, unless someone tells me that it shouldn't even work in theory.

I'd like to both copy an existing TiVo Premiere drive to a larger drive. I'm guessing the size growth is an issue, but thought I'd ask.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

unitron said:


> Or you could just use "dd" and spend the money on beer.


:up::up::up:


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## Resist (Dec 21, 2003)

What about this one? http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-eSAT...5DLA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318972445&sr=8-1

Or this.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRrJtEYHOj8&feature=related[/media]


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## Guy Kuo (Feb 10, 1999)

unitron said:


> Or you could just use "dd" and spend the money on beer.


Use dd FIRST

Then enjoy the beer.

Else, you might dd in the wrong direction and ..........


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## rallykeeper (Oct 30, 2009)

I'm an OS X user, don't have the time or inclination to build/borrow my own PC and for under $50, if it works, I'd rather use a disk duplicator. 

I think a disk duplicator would also be a lot faster than weaKnees (there's no turnaround time shipping to my own house), and probably the same net cost.

If it doesn't work, I'll probably just use weaKnees.


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## Webguideguy (Nov 19, 2002)

Did anyone try this???


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## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

Webguideguy said:


> Did anyone try this???


Doesn't sound like it given that there are cheaper and better ways to do it. Also, if you were to just copy the drive, you wouldn't have the capability to expand the recording space. Tools like WinMFS, JMFS and MFSTools actually have the capability to add partitions for expanded recording space after you copy a drive to a larger drive. And on Tivos older than the Premieres, you can actually use a smaller image (typically 200MB-300MB) to create a Tivo drive directly without having to copy from one drive to the other.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Does anybody know if the new Intel Macs will boot from the jmfs cd?


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

unitron said:


> Does anybody know if the new Intel Macs will boot from the jmfs cd?


I think it does but I'll check when I get home from work and post for sure.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

FWIW jmfs boots up on my Macbook (C2D version) and recognizes drives. Have not tried to manipulate any drives yet. Had to burn a cd as I could not get it to boot off a USB stick. 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

lillevig said:


> Doesn't sound like it given that there are cheaper and better ways to do it. Also, if you were to just copy the drive, you wouldn't have the capability to expand the recording space. Tools like WinMFS, JMFS and MFSTools actually have the capability to add partitions for expanded recording space after you copy a drive to a larger drive. And on Tivos older than the Premieres, you can actually use a smaller image (typically 200MB-300MB) to create a Tivo drive directly without having to copy from one drive to the other.


Yes, but WinMFS will not copy drive A of a two drive setup to a new drive when the old drive is failing. And MFSTools is a pain in the neck.

I already have the Aluratek, just too chicken to try it.

So, has anyone tried it?


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## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

dougdingle said:


> Yes, but WinMFS will not copy drive A of a two drive setup to a new drive when the old drive is failing. And MFSTools is a pain in the neck.
> 
> I already have the Aluratek, just too chicken to try it.
> 
> So, has anyone tried it?


The OP was not worried about a two-drive setup. In order to keep the new drive married to the second drive I suspect that the new drive would have to be an exact copy. There are several SW cloning programs that will do that (I use Clonezilla to clone my desktop drive) but many of them likely use DD as the underlying tool (like Clonezilla and MFSTools do). If you have the HW duplicator already, then try it and post the results.


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## dougdingle (Jul 4, 2007)

This (and many other tasks) would be made *so* much simpler if hard drive manufacturers provided a "Read Only" jumper on their drives, so there was zero risk of doing something bad to the original drive...


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## Elgato54 (Sep 21, 2010)

dougdingle said:


> This (and many other tasks) would be made *so* much simpler if hard drive manufacturers provided a "Read Only" jumper on their drives, so there was zero risk of doing something bad to the original drive...


That's the best new idea I have heard in a long time.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

dougdingle said:


> This (and many other tasks) would be made *so* much simpler if hard drive manufacturers provided a "Read Only" jumper on their drives, so there was zero risk of doing something bad to the original drive...


Most computer bios can set a drive to read only, few people in the world need this.


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Never seen a BIOS that could do this. And while there are devices that can put a drive into read-only, they tend to be fairly expensive because they analyze all the commands going to the drive and only fail the writes (they're made for law enforcement when they image drives to guarantee the evidence has not been tampered with).

Though, if you're using dd, it's easier to dd to a file then dd the file to the new drive. This way if you do it backwards, no harm done (you have a big empty file), and can dd again. And once you dd it back, you can save the file as a backup.

Oh, and a Mac can do this quite easily - being that it's a Unix system under the hood. I think OS X even has dd. The disk naming changes to /dev/diskN and partitions being /dev/diskNsM (using the BSD nomenclature where partitions are known as "slices"). Disk Utility can identify the right dev node.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Worf said:


> Never seen a BIOS that could do this. And while there are devices that can put a drive into read-only, they tend to be fairly expensive because they analyze all the commands going to the drive and only fail the writes (they're made for law enforcement when they image drives to guarantee the evidence has not been tampered with).
> 
> Though, if you're using dd, it's easier to dd to a file then dd the file to the new drive. This way if you do it backwards, no harm done (you have a big empty file), and can dd again. And once you dd it back, you can save the file as a backup.
> 
> Oh, and a Mac can do this quite easily - being that it's a Unix system under the hood. I think OS X even has dd. The disk naming changes to /dev/diskN and partitions being /dev/diskNsM (using the BSD nomenclature where partitions are known as "slices"). Disk Utility can identify the right dev node.


My BIOS has a write protect check box that I never used and just assumed that if I checked that box the drive could not be written to. I have a Asus motherboard P6TD with AMI BIOS.


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## Lensman (Dec 22, 2001)

FWIW, I just used the StarTech duplicator to copy my original Premier drive onto a new 2TB drive and then used JMFS Live to expand and supersize the drive. Worked great.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

Lensman said:


> FWIW, I just used the StarTech duplicator to copy my original Premier drive onto a new 2TB drive and then used JMFS Live to expand and supersize the drive. Worked great.


Any disk copy system that does a bit for bit copy will work, as long as it does not anything to the target disk.


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