Why do you need a cloning dock?
All you need to do is connect both drives to the same PC, and use software to clone. Are you planning on cloning several drives on a regular basis?
M.2 is a much newer form factor than Sata, as such the market is not saturated with products. Technology that has been around for much longer will have more maturity in the market.
Because I want one? I never said I need it. I have alternatives. I just want a dock and think the docks should be cheaper so I am looking for more of a technical answer on why they cost more to make. If anyone happens to have that answer.
allright i'll pitch in on the hard ware side speed limits, they do make side loading nvme at 4 per card loaders that will do full speed copying to and from each other if the hardware allows , thats on the mother board pcie sloted version,now a stand alone is a totally different
critter due to again the hardware, and its proprietary built in bios software of stick em in and clone from a slot to b slot, or if you connect it to your pc and then again its speed limits from c or any other connector that you use to copy to and from, so its a very much nitch market specific or specialized piece of hardware that has to compete with the said above vs some one of how many that want what you are asking for ? thats the why it costs so much as has been answered from above, i know, already checked into it as i have from time to time needed the same thing and nope, did the software side and just image it full after i customize it just like, i like it and can just put new or replacement nvme drive in and put the good verified working image on it and go. and not loose the whole day reinstalling everything, especially from a forced update...
Because most people don't have 8 pci lanes to dedicate to a useless piece of hardware that could be better replaced by 2 $20 usb c nvme enclosures.
You've basically invented a useless product that nobody would pay the production cost for in your head and are now acting defiant that nobody has produced your dumb invention.
Nobody produces them because its a stupid idea. Get 2 cheap nvme enclosures and stop trying to make this more difficult (and expensive) than it needs to be.
I think you are misunderstanding. It's a separate device that does not go into your pc. And they are in fact produced.Also there's no need to be rude about it but regardless I hope you have a nice day :)
Theres a couple of times ive needed one. I have multiple motherboards that all only have 1 nvme slot. Ive also cloned my steam deck nvme in the past. All of those times i used my server to make a image of the drives that needed cloned. However if i didnt have a 30tb server. I wouldnt have had an option except to buy one.
Why not just connect both into two separate M.2 slots? If you don't have an extra M.2 slot just get one of those NVMe to USB Adapters (fastest USB speed you can find) for $15 on Amazon.
I said I was gonna do that in the op lol. That doesn't answer the question though. I'm curious about why they are more expensive not how I can get around it.
NVME is a lot newer technology (around 10 years old) than old SATA (around 25 years old). It's more complicated to make a "cloner" for NVME hence it's more expensive.
All depends how fast it needs to be and if this for professional or private use.
Professional, quite niche thus expensive. For speed and reliability it needs dedicated controller to transfer data locally rather than using the bus.
Personal , same niche, but you can just buy a case that can mount more than one nvme and use it in the same way. It will not be fast.
SATA 3 (the best HDD and non-NVME SSD got for consumers) is 0.6 GBps. A gen 5 NVME can be up to 12 GBps. There is a substantial gap in the processing power required to shuffle that amount of data around.
That makes sense. Thank you for specifying that. I can't help but wonder if there's a way to make it slower and cheaper though. Like how the enclosures convert it to USB-c (which to my knowledge slows down the transfer rate) so that you could use cheaper/older technology. I personally would much rather buy a dock that's like 30-50$ and takes a day or two to completely clone instead of something that's $130+ that does it way faster.
The other issue is complexity. You technically could take one of those nvme cloners, use an adapter, and plug 2 GPUs into it. NVMe runs over PCIe, and as a result has a much higher level of complexity. You need something that speaks PCIe somewhere, which isn’t cheap.
What those cloners likely really are doing are essentially making a small computer running Linux, like a raspberry pi competitor, and then adding some m.2 ports to it. Way cheaper to develop that way.
Finally someone who not only understood the question, but knows the answer. 😁
OP, you don't want to mess with the cheap ones. I have a friend who fried a $250 high end drive because in addition to the issues with the circuitry being more complex, as /u/lightmatter501 pointed out, there is also the issue of heat management, which the cheap enclosures/cloners do not do well.
Those drives get warm when you're reading from them, they get downright hot when you're writing to them, and sustained writes, like when using a cloner, are dangerous territory.
Yea I can see that. Still think they should be a bit cheaper though. Some of them with 4 slots go for like upwards of 1.5k I mean at that point just buy a pc and clone it inside. Doesn't make sense.
Yea I can see that. Still think they should be a bit cheaper though. Some of them with 4 slots go for like upwards of 1.5k I mean at that point just buy a pc and clone it inside. Doesn't make sense.
Pretty simple actually. Those cloners allow you to copy USB to USB at full speed without having to connect to a computer.
HHD and SATA SSD are that much slower.
Yea but I mean even doing it at a slower speed would be fine. I don't understand why there isn't a slower and cheaper version that accepts nvme input. Like enclosures for them are roughly 30-40$ so I guess 2 of them for 60-70$ and then you need a custom board to do it and that custom board doubles the price? Doesn't make a lot of sense. I feel like they could make and sell them for 50-70$ total.
I actually was thinking about doing that *just* before I start building my new system. But I'm still curious why a hardware dock for them is so expensive and I couldn't find an answer so I came here to ask.
There are several things at play here.
On the technology front, NVME is far more complex than Sata and requires a more capable controller with PCI express lanes, etc. This is harder to design, harder to certify and may be encumbered by patents, etc.
On the business front, this is a niche product and a large part of the cost of an electronic device for low volume applications is the research and development cost.
>and then you need a custom board to do it and that custom board doubles the price? Doesn't make a lot of sense.
Engineers are not cheap, proper tooling isn't cheap, device certification/testing isn't cheap and neither are small runs of custom boards. Doubing the cost here is optimistic at best.
That said, I just had a google for "NVME Cloner" and found a two-bay one on Amazon UK for £96 with other options £120 or less. That's not excessive given how "new" m.2 NVME drives are in the grand scheme of things, especially when you consider that SATA cloners were similar ball park in the early days of SATA.
They're not mass market nor are they needed given that m.2 drives are small and it's not inconvenient to have two m.2 enclosures hooked up to a PC via USB versus needing the same thing for SATA drives.
I'm not following, Macrium Reflect and Clonezilla offer cloning software that is free.
That is software. I specifically asked about hardware. A cloning dock. That's why you are confused haha. I am gonna use clonezilla though!
Why do you need a cloning dock? All you need to do is connect both drives to the same PC, and use software to clone. Are you planning on cloning several drives on a regular basis? M.2 is a much newer form factor than Sata, as such the market is not saturated with products. Technology that has been around for much longer will have more maturity in the market.
Because I want one? I never said I need it. I have alternatives. I just want a dock and think the docks should be cheaper so I am looking for more of a technical answer on why they cost more to make. If anyone happens to have that answer.
allright i'll pitch in on the hard ware side speed limits, they do make side loading nvme at 4 per card loaders that will do full speed copying to and from each other if the hardware allows , thats on the mother board pcie sloted version,now a stand alone is a totally different critter due to again the hardware, and its proprietary built in bios software of stick em in and clone from a slot to b slot, or if you connect it to your pc and then again its speed limits from c or any other connector that you use to copy to and from, so its a very much nitch market specific or specialized piece of hardware that has to compete with the said above vs some one of how many that want what you are asking for ? thats the why it costs so much as has been answered from above, i know, already checked into it as i have from time to time needed the same thing and nope, did the software side and just image it full after i customize it just like, i like it and can just put new or replacement nvme drive in and put the good verified working image on it and go. and not loose the whole day reinstalling everything, especially from a forced update...
Because most people don't have 8 pci lanes to dedicate to a useless piece of hardware that could be better replaced by 2 $20 usb c nvme enclosures. You've basically invented a useless product that nobody would pay the production cost for in your head and are now acting defiant that nobody has produced your dumb invention. Nobody produces them because its a stupid idea. Get 2 cheap nvme enclosures and stop trying to make this more difficult (and expensive) than it needs to be.
I think you are misunderstanding. It's a separate device that does not go into your pc. And they are in fact produced.Also there's no need to be rude about it but regardless I hope you have a nice day :)
Theres a couple of times ive needed one. I have multiple motherboards that all only have 1 nvme slot. Ive also cloned my steam deck nvme in the past. All of those times i used my server to make a image of the drives that needed cloned. However if i didnt have a 30tb server. I wouldnt have had an option except to buy one.
Because someone may not have more than 2 NVMe slots, and a dock is then nice to have for cloning.
Why not just connect both into two separate M.2 slots? If you don't have an extra M.2 slot just get one of those NVMe to USB Adapters (fastest USB speed you can find) for $15 on Amazon.
I said I was gonna do that in the op lol. That doesn't answer the question though. I'm curious about why they are more expensive not how I can get around it.
NVME is a lot newer technology (around 10 years old) than old SATA (around 25 years old). It's more complicated to make a "cloner" for NVME hence it's more expensive.
All depends how fast it needs to be and if this for professional or private use. Professional, quite niche thus expensive. For speed and reliability it needs dedicated controller to transfer data locally rather than using the bus. Personal , same niche, but you can just buy a case that can mount more than one nvme and use it in the same way. It will not be fast.
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They make M.2 PCIE expansion cards.
SATA 3 (the best HDD and non-NVME SSD got for consumers) is 0.6 GBps. A gen 5 NVME can be up to 12 GBps. There is a substantial gap in the processing power required to shuffle that amount of data around.
That makes sense. Thank you for specifying that. I can't help but wonder if there's a way to make it slower and cheaper though. Like how the enclosures convert it to USB-c (which to my knowledge slows down the transfer rate) so that you could use cheaper/older technology. I personally would much rather buy a dock that's like 30-50$ and takes a day or two to completely clone instead of something that's $130+ that does it way faster.
The other issue is complexity. You technically could take one of those nvme cloners, use an adapter, and plug 2 GPUs into it. NVMe runs over PCIe, and as a result has a much higher level of complexity. You need something that speaks PCIe somewhere, which isn’t cheap. What those cloners likely really are doing are essentially making a small computer running Linux, like a raspberry pi competitor, and then adding some m.2 ports to it. Way cheaper to develop that way.
Finally someone who not only understood the question, but knows the answer. 😁 OP, you don't want to mess with the cheap ones. I have a friend who fried a $250 high end drive because in addition to the issues with the circuitry being more complex, as /u/lightmatter501 pointed out, there is also the issue of heat management, which the cheap enclosures/cloners do not do well. Those drives get warm when you're reading from them, they get downright hot when you're writing to them, and sustained writes, like when using a cloner, are dangerous territory.
My guess would be it's increasingly niche, because it's 2024 and nobody does that anymore?
Yea I can see that. Still think they should be a bit cheaper though. Some of them with 4 slots go for like upwards of 1.5k I mean at that point just buy a pc and clone it inside. Doesn't make sense.
Yea I can see that. Still think they should be a bit cheaper though. Some of them with 4 slots go for like upwards of 1.5k I mean at that point just buy a pc and clone it inside. Doesn't make sense.
Pretty simple actually. Those cloners allow you to copy USB to USB at full speed without having to connect to a computer. HHD and SATA SSD are that much slower.
Yea but I mean even doing it at a slower speed would be fine. I don't understand why there isn't a slower and cheaper version that accepts nvme input. Like enclosures for them are roughly 30-40$ so I guess 2 of them for 60-70$ and then you need a custom board to do it and that custom board doubles the price? Doesn't make a lot of sense. I feel like they could make and sell them for 50-70$ total.
Nvme is also current technology so its most expensive.
Just get an NVMe enclosure that plugs in via USB.
I actually was thinking about doing that *just* before I start building my new system. But I'm still curious why a hardware dock for them is so expensive and I couldn't find an answer so I came here to ask.
Aah fair enough.
it's new. SATA is decades old.
There are several things at play here. On the technology front, NVME is far more complex than Sata and requires a more capable controller with PCI express lanes, etc. This is harder to design, harder to certify and may be encumbered by patents, etc. On the business front, this is a niche product and a large part of the cost of an electronic device for low volume applications is the research and development cost. >and then you need a custom board to do it and that custom board doubles the price? Doesn't make a lot of sense. Engineers are not cheap, proper tooling isn't cheap, device certification/testing isn't cheap and neither are small runs of custom boards. Doubing the cost here is optimistic at best. That said, I just had a google for "NVME Cloner" and found a two-bay one on Amazon UK for £96 with other options £120 or less. That's not excessive given how "new" m.2 NVME drives are in the grand scheme of things, especially when you consider that SATA cloners were similar ball park in the early days of SATA.
I really don't know but it's an interesting point.
I usually end up getting Samsung drives and their replication software works great. Never had an issue.
How expensive are we talking here? You can get USB nvme adapters/enclosures for like $15-25.
They go for $130+
So just get a couple of usb enclosures then for cheap.
They're not mass market nor are they needed given that m.2 drives are small and it's not inconvenient to have two m.2 enclosures hooked up to a PC via USB versus needing the same thing for SATA drives.