0-20k Advice on mini pc

R

r4hul

Galvanizer
Hey peeps,

So I want to buy a mini pc just for cloning.
Is there any mini pc with two nvme slots and one sata slot?
The mini pc will solely be used for cloning using clone zilla.

If you have any other solutions for cloning in a cheaper way please suggest.

Can't use my desktop as it is sff pc and it's cumbersome to open and do all this.

Thanks.
 
r4hul said:
I like the sound of that. Does macrium reflect has the function to enlarge the partitions if I restore it to a larger drive?
Click to expand...
Yes, it also allows you build a bootable rescue disk. Macrium Rescue free is an old version which does not get any updates but works fine. Alternatively use Veeam Agent -
www.veeam.com

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@r4hul , It would be much cheaper to use USB 3.x NVMe enclosure to clone drives.
I recently used rescuezilla: https://rescuezilla.com/ from a USB Drive, and a NVMe to USB enclosure for cloning a system drive.

Successfully migrated systems:
  • 1 TB HDD to 1 TB NVMe: in a Intel 8th Gen based HP Laptop. (Windows 11 machine)
  • 128GB NVMe to 1TB NVMe: Resized the partitions using Gparted after successful clone.(Windows 11 machine).
I didn't have to remove the drive from their original systems.
Once successful clone has been done, I replaced the drives and confirmed that no data loss has occurred.

I have kept the original drive content as is in-case the user comes back with a request retrieve data from the original drives.

Plus I have also used rescuezilla to clone boot images of systems which are mostly used for experimental purposes over the network.
I have created those system disks images on a network drive and can restore from them over the network I can create updated backup on some schedule.
 
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@AmeyaVS today morning I did the cloning of the drive of my roommate. I have nvme enclosure and saw that the cloning speed was so low even though it was connected to usb c. I was trying to clone 512gb ssd to another 512 gb SSD.
However, I had to stop the process and then thought of Opening the laptop to see if it has two nvme slots which it had. So I installed the new ssd to second port and did the cloning.
The whole process took only approx 15 mins.
That is why I was thinking cloning natively using mini pc.
 
r4hul said:
@AmeyaVS today morning I did the cloning of the drive of my roommate. I have nvme enclosure and saw that the cloning speed was so low even though it was connected to usb c. I was trying to clone 512gb ssd to another 512 gb SSD.
However, I had to stop the process and then thought of Opening the laptop to see if it has two nvme slots which it had. So I installed the new ssd to second port and did the cloning.
The whole process took only approx 15 mins.
That is why I was thinking cloning natively using mini pc.
Click to expand...
Probably the USB enclosure does not support high speed or the controller on it is broken in some way.
These happen quite frequently with cheaper enclosure.

Also, the cloning takes time if the drives are quite full or failing in some way as drive errors also do affect the cloning process.
But, glad you found another nvme slot on the device.
 
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AmeyaVS said:
Probably the USB enclosure does not support high speed or the controller on it is broken in some way.
These happen quite frequently with cheaper enclosure.

Also, the cloning takes time if the drives are quite full or failing in some way as drive errors also do affect the cloning process.
But, glad you found another nvme slot on the device.
Click to expand...
I'm using orico one https://amzn.in/d/bTL0UWt

Yeah. The drive which I cloned has 40% life left.
 
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