There are many reasons why you might want to clone a hard disk, although the most normal is because the source hard disk is starting to fail, or because you want to upgrade your mechanical disk to an SSD.
In any case, we show you how you can do it independently, by hardware, and without having to use any software.
What do we need to clone a hard drive by hardware?
We will need a docking for two hard drives, usually with USB 3.0 connectivity, that supports the interface of the devices we are going to use, usually SATA 3. We will also obviously need both disks for the cloning process, the origin and the destination. Make sure that the destination disk has the same capacity or more than the source disk, or cloning cannot be performed.
As for the docking, if we do not want to have to depend on software or even a computer, we need a docking that supports the cloning of disks autonomously.
Do not worry, although it is heard that it is a very expensive product you can find good equipment at an approximate price of $ 30 plus taxes, such as the WAVLINK USB 3.0 to SATA.
How the cloning process is performed
The first thing to do is place the docking on a solid and smooth surface, and connect it to the electric current.
Subsequently, connect the source and destination disk in its corresponding socket, since although the most common is that the source disk is placed behind and the destination in front, this changes depending on the manufacturer. In some docking, it is also indicated in the slots themselves
Once we are sure where each one is going, we insert them into their corresponding slots and turn on the docking.
Now you have to wait a few seconds for the discs to boot (usually 10-15 seconds). Some more advanced docking have indicators that will show us the status of the disks, and so we will know if they are ready or not.
If we want to be sure, we wait a minute, which is not so much time either. Once the process is ready, they have a button that we will simply press and the cloning process will begin.
Again, in some advanced docking, they even have light signals that will tell us in what state the process is, even with percentages.
Once the process is finished, which can take several hours in some cases depending on the capacity of the disks, we can turn off the docking, take out the hard disks, and proceed to install the destination disk, which is now a clone of which We had as origin, in our system.
