INTRODUCTION

   Hard disk drive docking stations are amongst the very few things that have really made things easier for me (and i bet for most of you as well) since it's a lot more convenient to just insert an disk drive in them and start working on it than opening your PC Case and installing it inside. That being said HDD docking stations are not really ment as a permanent solution since an internal SATA connection is a lot faster than eSATA and USB 2.0/3.0 altogether (and you can't really damage a drive as easy as when it's out in the open) but that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't use them for a long time if you don't really care about having the best possible transfer speeds. However that's not all and so recently we see more and more of those docking stations featuring cloning capabilities allowing pretty much anyone to clone a drive without much effort. The latest RaidSonic ICY BOX IB-120CL-U3 HDD Docking & Clone Station is such a device and we decided to take it for a ride.

   RaidSonic Technology GmbH was founded in Hamburg 1999. To realize our future visions and the rising requirements, RaidSonic moved to Ahrensburg (20 min. away from Hamburg) in May 2004.The capacity of our new warehouse, our permanent improving logistic and the expanded technical support lets us look into the future very optimistically. Our vision in a constantly growing IT market is to develop products, which will become your future dreams. Our extensive product portfolio, which we distribute Europe-wide, combines all internal and external solutions for the application of mass storage, for industrial and professional applications as well as for the private sphere, too. Through our all along increasing know-how, good results in research and development and our good cooperation with our long-time customers we could achieve a dynamic growth.

   Much like with most HDD cloning devices the RaidSonic ICY BOX IB-120CL-U3 HDD Docking & Clone Station is quite compact and features two drive slots for 2.5/3.5" drives. However what makes it special is that it's amongst the very few available HDD cloners in the market currently compatible with USB 3.0 which means you can expect very good read/write speeds. Unfortunately connectivity is not something that plays any part whatsoever in the cloning ability of the unit and so as you will all see later on although the IB-120CL-U3 did finish all our cloning tests somewhat sooner than the Sandberg HDD cloner things are far from perfect in that department something which i hope gets resolved soon. So let’s proceed and see exactly how the latest ICY BOX IB-120CL-U3 HDD Docking & Clone Station by RaidSonic performs.