Heavy Gear

Heavy Gear October 2004 • Vol.4 Issue 10 Page(s) 19 in print issue
Diskology Disk Jockey

Disk Jockey
$329
Diskology
(916) 645-3196
www.diskology.com
CPU Rating: 4
Specs: 1.65 inches high x 2.5 inches wide x 5.6 inches high, 1.1 pounds, 1 USB type B, 2 FireWire 6-pin, OS support: Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP and Mac OS 9.1 and higher

Diskology's Disk Jockey is a dream come true for any PC hobbyist or technician who lives over a test bench or is always swapping hard drives in and out of machines. Roughly the size of a blackboard eraser, the DJ sports two 40-pin IDE connectors, an included AC adapter, and USB 2.0 and FireWire ports.

At first, I was only interested in the DJ for its cloning capability. I cloned a WD 80GB drive to a 200GB drive in 33:18 (minutes:seconds)—notably better than the 40 minutes Diskology told me to expect. All I did was connect the two drives (each jumpered as a master), power up the brick, and then hit the power button. The DJ's Achilles heel is its LED status indicator system, and I ended up going on faith that it was working. I then dropped the 200GB drive into a Windows XP system and used Windows to create and format the remaining 120GB into a usable partition. Observe that no PC was involved.

If you're worried about data integrity, turn the DJ's mode dial to Verification to ensure that the data on Disk 1matches that on Disk 2. There are two erasure modes, one for single-pass and one for NSA specification triple-pass wiping. But wait; there's more: Connect the DJ to your PC via USB or FireWire, and you can have instant, enclosureless external hard drives. With two drives, you can switch to Mirroring mode, essentially RAID 1. Alternatively, Spanning mode lets you have two drives connected to the DJ appear in Windows as a single large drive.

Immensely handy and OS platform-agnostic, the DJ is a must-have for anyone who has earned their hand scars inside computer chassis. Also keep an eye out for Diskology's forthcoming Disk Junk utility for using the DJ to upgrade TiVos.

by William Van Winkle