1:2 Standalone USB Duplicator and Eraser for Flash Drives

StarTech.com hard drive and flash drive duplicators perform a sector by sector copy, which means that the target drive must be the exact same size (down to the sector) or larger than the hard drive or flash drive that is being copied. During a sector by sector copy, each individual sector is copied over to the target drive, regardless of whether or not any data is present. A 500 GB hard drive with 50 GB of data on it will take the same amount of time to copy as a 500 GB hard drive with 450 GB of data on it.

If you have two hard drives or flash drives that are listed as the same size but are different makes or models, you need to check how large both drives are down to the sector to ensure that the target drive is the exact same size or larger.

Software-level encryption on the drive poses no issue to StarTech.com duplicators, as the duplicators copy encrypted data sector by sector over to the new drive.

Hardware-level encryption or BIOS level hard drive locks cause the duplication to halt and fail, as the drive is unable to read or write the sectors that are encrypted.

Duplication of Hidden Protected Area (HPA) Partitions or Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) cause the duplicator to halt and fail, as the drive cannot read and write the protected partitions on the drive.

Note: Our UNIDUPDOCK, SATDOCK22RE and SATDOCK4U3RE do include the ability to copy HPA partitions, but the duplication is still dependent on how the HPA partition is written to the hard drive, whether or not it is encrypted and how it is encrypted.

StarTech.com duplicators were not designed to recover failing or damaged drives. If the duplicator encounters a corrupt or unreadable sector, the duplication halts and fails.  If the source drive has bad sectors, use the Read Error Skip feature if your model of duplicator has it; however, if there are too many errors, it may still halt and fail even with this feature. If this happens, you will need third-party recovery software or custom-built recovery hardware to copy from a failing or damaged drive.

Quick and secure erase functions

Quick erase and secure erase are functions the duplicators call on the hard drives themselves. How they work depends on the manufacturer of the hard drive.

Department of Defense erase function

A Department of Defense (DoD) erase is a function performed by the duplicator where it does three passes. The first pass writes all 0s. The second pass writes all 1s. The third pass writes 0s and 1s randomly.

Note: Not all duplicators will feature all of these erase modes. It is important to review the product manual to confirm the available erase modes.

Although the USB flash drive duplicators are intended for use with USB flash drives, they can be used with external hard drives.

Note: Due to the slower copy speed of the USB flash drive enclosures, using an external hard drive as the source of the copy can take a considerable amount of time. USBDUP12 and USBDUP15 both copy at 1.5 GB per minute. Therefore, if you use a 1 TB external hard drive as the source of a copy, it would take roughly 11 hours to complete.

When you troubleshoot issues with a hard drive dock or duplicator, there are some quick tests that you can complete to rule out potential problems. You can test to make sure that the following components are working correctly and are not the source of the issue:

• IDE, SATA, and eSATA cables
• Hard drives
• Hard drive dock or duplicator

To test your setup components, try the following:

• Use the cables, hard drives, and hard drive dock or duplicator in another setup to see if the problem is with the components or the setup.
• Use a different cable, hard drive, and hard drive dock or duplicator in your setup to see if the problem persists. Ideally, you should test a component that you know works in another setup.

When you test the hard drive and hard drive dock or duplicator, it is recommended that you do the following:

Note: For a hard drive duplicator you may need to switch the device to PC mode (if available).

1. To check Disk Management, press the Windows key + R, type diskmgmt.msc, and press Enter. Check to see if your hard drive is listed.
2. Do one of the following:

• If the hard drive is listed with unallocated space, the hard drive needs to be reformatted. Right-click unallocated and click New Simple Volume. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the reformatting.​

Note: Formatting a hard drive erases all of the data on it. Make sure that you back up all of your data before you reformat the hard drive. 

• If the hard drive is listed as healthy but does not have a drive letter, for example, C:, right-click healthy and click Change Drive Letter and Paths. Click Add, assign a drive letter, and click OK.

Note: A formatted hard drive will not show up in Computer or My Computer until it has a drive letter assigned to it.

You do not need to format your target hard drive before you begin to duplicate it, because the target hard drive is automatically overwritten during the duplication process.

The hard drive duplicator copies the exact partition from the source drive to the target drive. Since it is required that you use a target drive that is equal or larger in size than the source drive a portion of the target drive appears as free space. You can append free space to the live partition on the target drive so that the full size of the drive can be utilized.

Note: A partition cannot be extended on an operating system drive that is in use. You must extend the partition when it not being used by the operating system, and ideally when it is still connected to the duplicator.

Extend a partition on a computer running Windows

Note: Do not extend a System Reserved partition. Only extend the primary partition, which is typically the largest in size and formatted with NTFS or FAT32.

After you have successfully duplicated a drive and the target drive is still connected to your computer system (for example, through the duplicator), complete the following:

1. Press the Windows key + R.
2. Type compmgmt.msc and click Ok.
3. In Computer Management, on the left side of the screen, click Disk Management.
4. Find the target drive. It will most likely be at the bottom of the list, have a partition that is the same size as the source drive, and have an unallocated area on the drive.
5. On the target drive, right-click the last partition on the right side of the screen and click Extend Volume.
6. In the Extend Volume wizard, click Next. By default, the remaining drive area is the amount of space used.
7. Click Next > Finish.

The primary partition on the drive now uses the entire drive area.

StarTech.com hard drive duplicators only read from the source drive and only write to the target drives while in standalone duplication mode .  A duplication that fails or halts will not cause a problem with the source drive.

You can use this device to duplicate an internal hard drive with the stand alone duplicator function if you remove the hard drive from the computer and connect it directly to this device.

Windows 10 

Before you can access a new or formatted drive in your operating system, you need to initialize it first and then create a partition on the drive. A partition defines an area of the drive to use for storing data. The partition uses a file system (for example, ex-FAT, NTFS, and so on).

Initialize a drive

Note: You typically only need to initialize a drive if the drive is new. If you cannot find an uninitialized drive in Disk Management, skip the following steps and try to partition your device.

1. Press the Windows key + R, type compmgmt.msc, and click Run to open Computer Management.

2. Navigate to Disk Management.

3. When prompted to, initialize your disk(s). If you are running Windows^® 7 or later and are using a drive larger than 2TB, initialize the disk(s) with GPT. If you are running an earlier version of Windows, initialize the disk(s) with MBR. For more information, visit the following FAQ: https://www.startech.com/support/faqs/technical-support?topic=hard-drives#mbr-vs-gpt.

4. Click OK.

Create a partition in a drive

Note: The following steps create an NTFS partition that uses the entire drive space. To use a different file system, select a different option in step 6.

1. Right-click Unallocated or RAW volume, and select New Simple Volume.

2. In the New Partition Wizard, click Next.

3. Select Primary partition.

4. Leave the partition size set to default, and click Next.

5. Assign a drive letter or leave it set to the default, and click Next.

6. Enter the following settings to format the partition:

• In the File System field, enter NTFS.
• Set the Allocation unit size to Default.
• In the Volume label field, enter <your name/reference>.
• Select the Perform a quick format check box.
• Clear the Enable file and folder compression check box.

7. Click Next > Finish.

The new drive should appear in Windows Explorer.

Mac OS

Before you can access a new or formatted drive in your operating system, you need to initialize it first and then create a partition on the drive. A partition defines an area of the drive to use for storing data. The partition uses a file system (for example, HFS+, ex-FAT, NTFS, and so on).

Initialize a drive

Mac OSX detects a drive that needs to be initialized and automatically prompts you to initialize the drive. If you are prompted to initialize the drive, click Initialize. If you are not prompted to initialize the drive and you cannot find the drive in Finder, you will need to create a partition on the drive.

Create a partition on a drive

Note: The following steps create an HFS+ (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) partition that uses the entire drive space.

To create a partition on a new drive, complete the following:

1. Open Finder.

2. Navigate to Applications and click Utilities.

3. Open Disk Utility.

4. Select the new drive and click the Partition tab.

5. Click Options and verify that it is set to GUID Partition Table.

6. Enter a name for the partition.

7. Click Partition.

The drive should now be accessible in Finder.

For products related to this article, click here.