There’s been numerous times when I’ve had to clone a hard drive for whatever reason and it’s a tedious and just a long process. To do it you need software, I use Acronis, then you have pull your computer out, open the case, find cables for the hard drives, find the power connectors and then connect the drives and then you can start the cloning process after you start up the program. I can remember one computer I used for this wouldn’t recognize my USB mouse and I had a dig out an ancient PS/2 ball mouse to use with Acronis, it was just all a big hassle really. I did it that way for many years and I didn’t like it, there had to be an easier way and there really wasn’t until now.

Today for review I’ve got a product that I just love and I think it’s something that we should have had long ago as it’s one of those things that’s very much needed to make life simpler. Kingwin has recently introduced the EZ-Clone which is a tiny hard drive duplicator, with the press of a button you can clone a hard drive very easily. The EZ-Clone can also be used as an external drive to connect to your computer over USB 3.0, so it’s dual use really. Read on to learn more…

Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info

EZ-Clone

USI-2535CLU3
USB 3.0 to SATA & IDE One Click Clone Adapter for 2.5″ & 3.5″ Hard Drives

Features
-External USB 3.0 to Dual-SATA & Single-IDE Clone Adapter
-Standalone Disk Duplicator with One-Touch Clone Button (no PC needed)
-Supports 2.5” and 3.5” IDE and SATA Drives (SSD or HDD)
-Compatible with SATA I/II/III (1.5/3.0/6.0 Gbps)
-SATA Drive Hot-Swap Capability
-Supports Hard Drive up to 3TB disk size
-Dual output power supply with standard 4-pin power output and new SATA power output
-Up to 5 Gbps Data Transfer Rate in USB 3.0 port
-Compatible also with USB 2.0 (480Mbps) port
-USB Plug-and-Play Capability
-2 Drive LEDs and 4 Clone Progress LEDs
-Screw-less and Easy-to-Connect Design
-Windows & Mac OS Compatible (no driver installation needed)
-Includes EZ-Clone 2.5” IDE bridge board adapter, 4-pin IDE power cable, USB 3.0 cable, 12V DC power adapter, and User Manual (SSD/HDD not included)

The EZ-Clone USI-2535CLU3 is a USB 3.0 to Dual-SATA & Single-IDE Hard Drive Adapter that also works as a standalone disk-cloning duplicator. The EZ-Clone adapter provides support for two SATA (SSD or HDD) drives and one IDE hard drive in 2.5” or 3.5” form factors. Access up to two external drives at the same time (two SATA drives or one IDE and one SATA drive) when connected to the PC. The EZ-Clone also works as a standalone disk duplicator (IDE to SATA, or SATA to SATA) while disconnected to the PC.

Easy to Connect
Connecting the external drives is simple and easy. The EZ-Clone adapter comes with following drive interface:
IDE Source – for connecting a 3.5” IDE drive.
SATA1 Source – for connecting a 3.5” or 2.5” SATA drive.
SATA2 Target – for connecting a second 3.5” or 2.5” SATA drive.

NOTE: You cannot connect to the IDE Source and SATA1 Source at the same time. Only the IDE drive will be detected if both source drives are attached at the same time. Connect the SATA drive to the SATA2 Target interface to access IDE and SATA drive at the same time. Box includes a 3.5” to 2.5” IDE converter board to support 2.5” IDE drive.

Simply attach the IDE power and IDE/SATA drives, connect the 12V DC power adapter, turn on the adapter power switch, and plug the USB cable into your computer and the drives are automatically recognized. You can choose to connect just one IDE drive, or one SATA drive, or one IDE and one SATA drive, or two SATA drives. The EZ-Clone adapter has an IDE/SATA1 and SATA2 LEDs which will turn red when the drives are detected properly. You can also hot-swap SATA hard drives while the USB is plugged into the computer.

SuperSpeed USB 3.0 (10X Faster)
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 PC interface offers 10X faster performance (5Gbps) over Hi-Speed USB 2.0 (480Mbps) while still retaining backward compatibility and interoperability with all PC USB ports and devices. SuperSpeed USB 3.0 also works well with the latest Windows 8 and Mac OS X with no driver installation needed. USB plug-and-play allows the drives to be detected easily without needing to restart the computer.

Standalone Disk Duplicator
Another unique feature of the EZ-Clone is the stand-alone disk cloning feature that allows you to duplicate or clone the entire IDE or SATA source drive to another faster or larger SATA drive without having to connect to a computer. Simply attached the IDE or SATA source drive and the new SATA drive to the SATA2 Target connector, then turn on the EZ-Clone power and press the CLONE button for 3 seconds to begin the cloning process. The EZ-Clone has 4 progress LEDs (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%) that will turn blue to indicate the completed percentage of the clone process. The result is two identical drives containing the same files, boot sector, partition table and file system format. If the target drive is larger than the source drive, the remaining partition of the drive that was not used during the cloning process will be converted as an unallocated partition. You can still repartition and format that partition as extra logical drive.

Specifications:

Model Number: USI-2535CLU3 (EZ-Clone)
Product Type: SuperSpeed USB 3.0 to Dual-SATA/Single-IDE Drive Adapter
Clone Function: Yes (no PC connection needed)

Drive Configuration: (PC Connection)
1 x IDE (Source)
1 x SATA (Source or Target)
1 x IDE (Source) and 1 x SATA (Target)
1 x SATA (Source) and 1 x SATA (Target)

Max. Transfer Rate: USB 3.0 (up to 5Gbps)
SATA III (6Gbps)

HDD Capacity: Up to 3TB per drive
Supported OS: Compatible with Windows and Mac (no drivers needed)
LED Indicators: 4 x LED for Cloning Progress; 2 x LED for IDE/SATA
Weight: 0.95 lbs (431g) / Unit

Price: $30.61 (from Amazon at time of review)