SATA controller to clone drives...?

[Geir]

Hi,

I want to efficiently clone a number of SATA harddrives. Instead of
purchasing an expensive dedicated drive cloning box, I wonder if there
are fast PCIe SATA disk controller cards which are able to directly
clone disks using appropriate software. Either ont-to-one or one-to-two
disks.

Note that I'm not talking about a RAID solution. This should be a
clone-on-demand solution, preferably hot swappable.

Thanks for comments and tips on this issue

best regards

Geir

 

[Rod Speed]

I want to efficiently clone a number of SATA harddrives. Instead of
purchasing an expensive dedicated drive cloning box, I wonder if there
are fast PCIe SATA disk controller cards which are able to directly
clone disks using appropriate software. Either ont-to-one or
one-to-two disks.

Just about anything can do the one to one fine.

 

[Geir]

Just about anything can do the one to one fine.

Yeah, I know, but I hoped there were more specialized controllers which
could do this faster and without bothering the computer processor too
much to pump everything from SATA0 to SATA1....

geir

 

[Bob Willard]

Yeah, I know, but I hoped there were more specialized controllers which
could do this faster and without bothering the computer processor too
much to pump everything from SATA0 to SATA1....

geir

Sorry, but the way that HD=>HD copies work under Winduhs (and most other
OSs using standard hardware) is: HD=>RAM, and semi-concurrently,
RAM=>HD. As long as the HDs support DMA, there is very little OS overhead.

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

Yeah, I know, but I hoped there were more specialized controllers
which could do this faster and without bothering the computer
processor too much to pump everything from SATA0 to SATA1....

Only what you call the expensive dedicated drive cloning box.

 

[Rod Speed]

Geir wrote

Rod Speed wrote

Yeah, I know, but I hoped there were more specialized controllers which could do this faster

Nope, because a standard PC can do it as fast as the drives can go.

and without bothering the computer processor too much to pump everything from SATA0 to SATA1....

Standard DMA does that already.

 

[Arno]

Hi,

I want to efficiently clone a number of SATA harddrives. Instead of
purchasing an expensive dedicated drive cloning box, I wonder if there
are fast PCIe SATA disk controller cards which are able to directly
clone disks using appropriate software. Either ont-to-one or one-to-two
disks.

No. It does not work that way. The data always goes over the system
bus.

Note that I'm not talking about a RAID solution. This should be a
clone-on-demand solution, preferably hot swappable.

Well, you can use any Linux supported SATA controller with
hotplug working under Linux with 2 or more ports and script
this using dd or dd_rescue as basis. Maybe a day of work,
maybe less. Hardware can be at the lower end, likely some
on-board SATA controllers will work.

Arno

 

[Arno]

Yeah, I know, but I hoped there were more specialized controllers which
could do this faster and without bothering the computer processor too
much to pump everything from SATA0 to SATA1....

Not really. In fact "bithrting the CPU" to do some buffering
may make this faster, not slower. Apart from that sequential
reading or writing will already max out the disk speed if you
use PCI-E as bus.

Arno