Cirago Drive Dock

I purchased the CDD3000 based mainly on it's ability to clone drives without a connection to a computer. But it will not clone a drive if the target is the same size as the source. From page 4 of the manual: "TARGET HDD's capacity MUST be larger than SOURCE HDD, otherwise the CLONE cannot be completed. (Same capacity is also not acceptable)". The only place I found this little gem was in the instructions inside the box (at the time of purchase the instructions were not available as a download).Using the "Clone Drive" software will allow a clone of an identical size drive, but this requires software to be loaded and the dock to be attached to a PC.Edited in response to comments (Feb 17, 2013):In summary, with two identical drives:Hardware clone = FAIL!!!Software clone = SUCCESS!!! (but then you could use any dock)I think it is reasonable to assume that a device that claims to clone drives will clone to a target of equal size. And as the CDD3000 trumpets its ability to clone via hardware it was disappointing to discover that it cannot clone to an identical drive in hardware, and that that info is not reasonably available prior to purchase.PS: I never attempted to clone to a smaller target drive using either method.PPS: I never attempted to clone to drives greater than 2 TB (target or source, software or hardware).

I cloned a 160GB drive to a 320GB drive very easily w/ this easy to use product which did not require use of an external computer. The progress indicators on the unit give the user a good sense of how far along the duplication process is in increments of 25%. My particular clone took less than an hour. Maybe faster, I wasn't timing it.The laptop SATA drives I used fit well, and the unit will also hold larger form factor SATA drives. Now, I wouldn't shake the table too much with the smaller drives in it, but definitely the connection was firm enough for doing a duplication.The user's manual is pretty clear overall; it does state that the product will not work on drives of exactly the same size when using the hardware cloning only mode. Contact customer support of Cirago if this is important to you. When I contacted them they said it would work on drives of the same size (but they may have assumed I was using the software cloning method).When cloning to a larger drive, the extra space is left un-allocated on the target. So for me I had 160GB of extra space. Not that it was a big deal, but it bothered me. If it's important to utilize that space, then use a tool such as Acronis Disk Director to create a new partition from the un-allocated space and then merge the partitions. This worked well in my case. The Cirago product has a way of doing computer assisted cloning, but I didn't try that out, so maybe they have some better re-partitioning capabilities.One thing I ran into (which I also experienced with other cloning methods) is that if you mount both disks at the same time, at least on XP, then the drive mounted from USB loses the ability to boot when placed in the laptop. Cirago tells me this is because if two disks which have master boot records (MBR) at the same time, then the aux disk will lose its MBR (master boot record). I later ran fixmbr on the disk which wouldn't boot and still it couldn't boot, and then after doing a chkdsk /p /r I was able to boot from my original.I saw this boot issue on other products so it's not particular to the Cirago product. That being said, next time I clone a disk with an MBR, I'll be careful not to mount the cloned drive and the original at the same time.Overall I liked the product.

The problem with this docking station is you can't clone to a hard drive that is the same size or smaller. So if you have a 1gb that I want to clone to a new 1gb, you're out of luck! This is ridiculous!

this is awesome helps with what I wanted it to do and is easy enough to use on everyday items.

I'm not sure if it works on all drives but I successfully clones two drives the same size... 160gb Segate to a 160gb Segate. And it seems to work fine. Also, word of warning. Mark sure the drives aren't bios/harddrive locked or they wont clone (progress light won't flash). Also, to use the one touch clone, the USB cable can NOT be plugged in and you have to hold it for 3-secs..then press again to confirm then cloning progress light starts flashing. The Inateck FDU3C-2 Dual Hard Drive Docking Station seems to be the same exact unit as the Cirago CDD3000.

Even though I got this on salr at a greatly reduced priced, I still think I over paid. (I didn't try using it, unfortunately, until the return period was long over.)I've owned other Cirago products and was pleased with them.This one, however, is junk.Construction is very cheap. It looks cheap, feels cheap and most importantly performs the way you would expect a really cheap product to behave.The bays are larger than a 3.5 inch drive. They are open with the SATA connector sitting toward the rear as is normally the case. The problem is that.the bays are so large and the SATA connectors apparently a bit short that the drive may not retain contact and go offline! Absolutely unacceptable. Also, of minor concern, is the front bay is B and the rear A: backwards from normal configuration. There is no ejection mechanism which is a sure invitation to problems when trying to remove one drive while leaving the other in place.Drive recognition appears to take longer than on my other docking stations.I didn't even try cloning since that isn't one of my concerns.Overall, I warn potential purchasers away from this unit. For a few dollars more, you can go with StarTech, Thermalake or another brand with higher quality.Jerry