We had to take a moment to reflect back on a hard drive dock and duplicator/cloner we tested out last year–the EZ-Dock 3 by Kingwin. A simple to use device that works both via USB and can also duplicate on its own, without any connectivity to a PC.
It came back into the spotlight this week when we did a number of hard drive swaps, duplications, tests, formats, and more. Things have been a little crazy around here as of late. In the process of all of this, we broke out some of the devices (docks) we have tested both recently and in the past to help with the process. We have covered a number of solutions in recent months. However, the Kingwin was the one dock that separated itself from the others since it can process duplications on its own, without a PC or any kind of software.
It isn’t the fastest or most durable looking of the handful of docks, but it was the most user friendly. OWC’s dock for example, is fantastic. It is quick and offers a durability like none of the others. However, using it to clone anything requires connectivity and software to pull it off. It was still easy to use, and a great experience made for true professionals. However, the Kingwin takes friendliness as far as it can get, by simply turning it on and pressing a button.
This week, it cloned 8 separate drives, as well as a few re-clones on drives we were stress testing. Never once did we plug it in. We moved the drives to another dock we were using just for verifying the job with (connected to a PC), as we set the Kingwin up for its next objective. It hammered each job out without fail.
Again, not the fastest option as some of the drives took 7-9 hours to clone. Of course, these drives were in higher capacities of 4-6TB (but still, 7-9 hours takes patience). Regardless, we could walk away from it as it does its work, knowing that it will be successfully waiting there (finished) when we come back to it.
Only one of the docks failed during its task (two times), during which it was either cloning or transferring a large amount of data from one drive to the next (a StarTech model). The rest of the docks maintained their work. We just felt that the Kingwin was worth re-highlighting due to the fact that it was so darn easy to use. Not to mention, affordable since it runs less than $40.
