Rosewill’s M.2 SSD Cloner and Eraser drops to its lowest-ever price of $47 — become an IT hero, or just save yourself some time and frustration

4 hours ago 15

Rosewill SSD cloner and eraser on a desk, connected to a laptop

Last fall, a family member asked me for help with an older PC, which was trying to run Windows 10 and several programs on a cramped 110 GB SSD. At first, I figured I could clone the boot drive onto a more spacious drive so the OS and programs had more space to stretch out.

But the thought of juggling USB enclosures or shuffling drives in and out of my desktop filled me with dread as I pictured sitting there for hours, getting the system back up and running. So I looked into getting an M.2 SSD cloner, and was surprised to see they can be found for less than $50. And Rosewill’s upgraded Rosewill M.2 NVMe Cloner + Eraser, which just dropped down to its lowest-ever price of $47, is even more handy than a basic cloner, also offering four one-touch offline erase modes, or all your data deletion needs.

Check out this deal at Amazon

I don't love the plastic shell of Rosewill's cloner and eraser, but it's one of the more affordable options with these capabilities. I own the stepped-down model that doesn’t have the erase function (also on sale for $39, and using it is pretty straightforward. You plug in the included USB-C power adapter, put your source drive in the left slot, the destination drive in the right slot, press the power button on the back, and a few logos light up, letting you know you're ready to go. Press the clone button on the top, and drive cloning will commence (provided your destination is the same size or larger than your source).

That's assuming you want to do an offline clone. But because I needed resize the partition between the old 110 GB and the newer Team Group 512 GB SSD, I used the second included USB-C cable and connected my Rosewill cloner to my laptop and powered up the device. Both drives were recognized in Windows within seconds, so I fired up the excellent free DiskGenius software, cloned the old partition to a new drive with a few clicks, and then used the software to drag the boot partition to the full size of the new drive. The whole process took just a few minutes, since the Rosewill cloner supports 20 Gbps USB, and I wasn't exactly copying a huge partition.

The Rosewill cloner is also handy for just checking the contents of old M.2 drives you may have lying around. But if that's all you need, you can buy an NVMe enclosure or a single-drive dock. I also own a version of this model from Suitok, which costs $21.

More Prime Day Tech Deals

Join the Tom's Hardware deals Discord for up-to-the-minute hardware deals.

Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.

After a rough start with the Mattel Aquarius as a child, Matt built his first PC in the late 1990s and ventured into mild PC modding in the early 2000s. He’s spent the last 15 years covering emerging technology for Smithsonian, Popular Science, and Consumer Reports, while testing components and PCs for Computer Shopper, PCMag and Digital Trends.

Read Entire Article