MASSter 2000

Duplicate disk drives with ICS's portable duplication system

It's Wednesday morning. Your boss asks you to install 100 new desktop PCsbefore you leave on Friday for your 2-week vacation. Before you deploy thesesystems, you need to install several software packages on each computer. Thisprocess takes at least 2 hours for each machine. How will you complete the task?The solution is Image MASSter 2000 from Intelligent Computer Solutions.

The Image MASSter 2000 is a portable software duplication system thatcopies 1 hard disk to as many as 16 target drives simultaneously. Unlikesoftware-based duplication systems, the Image MASSter 2000 is a hardware-basedsystem with an optional software-driven command interface.

The Image MASSter is a small but hefty unit constructed with heavy-dutysteel. It weighs 40 pounds and has the same footprint as a small desktopcomputer. The unit has a carrying case for easy portability. The unit canoperate as a standalone unit for instant duplication of multiple drives. Youcontrol the standalone unit using a seven-button control panel and LCD display.You can also control the unit via an interface cable using software that runs onyour Windows 95 PC.

The Image MASSter works with any IDE hard disk. The unit supports IDE,Enhanced IDE, and Ultra-DMA IDE hard disks and works with any size disk drive.The source and target drives don't need to be the same model or size. The unitresizes partitions as it copies them to maximize space. The Image MASSteroperates with all types and combinations of operating system (OS) partitions(e.g., FAT, NTFS, UNIX). However, certain operations (such as resizing thepartition during copying) do not run with UNIX partitions.

Installing the Image MASSter is simple. Unpack the box, set the unit onyour workbench, and plug in the power cord. To use the unit, set up a masterhard disk with the configuration and software you want to duplicate. Plug themaster hard disk into the unit's Master slot and connect one or more hard disksto the target slots. Load the unit's software disk, power up the unit, and usethe control panel to navigate the unit's command menus to set options and startthe copy process.

To test the unit, I copied a Seagate 1.2GB hard disk to another 1.2GB harddisk using the standalone method. The master drive had one 134MB NTFS partition.My drive copy took 90 seconds to complete. As an alternative test, I copied aMaxtor 8GB Ultra-DMA hard disk to another 8GB Ultra-DMA hard disk. The masterdrive contained one 8GB FAT32 partition. Using the standalone copy method, theprocess took 35 minutes. For the final test, I copied a Maxtor 540MB IDE harddisk to three identical target disks. The master drive had one 540MB FATpartition. The copy process took 4 minutes.

The time required to copy the drive depends on the amount of data thatresides on the master disk. In my test of the two 540MB disks, the master diskhad only 235MB of used space. The transfer rate was 60MB per minute, which isgood considering the time involved in setting up a drive manually. The transferrate also depends on the hardware associated with the drives. For example,Ultra-DMA drives copy faster than standard IDE drives. Your copying time will beonly as fast as your slowest disk drive.

The PC-Host software that comes with the Image MASSter unit runs only onWin95 and uses a parallel port connection to communicate with the unit. Thisconnection is for command and control only--it's not a data connection. Youcan't load the software on a PC and then copy the PC's data to other targetdrives. You can use the software only to initiate transfers on the ImageMASSter.

Considering the time that the Image MASSter saves you, the product is worththe investment. If you manage a large enterprise computer facility with numerousdisks to duplicate, Image MASSter is the product for you.