Kanguru intros pricey standalone USB Duplicator

We aren't about to believe Kanguru's latest is really the "first of its kind," but it's not exactly something you see everyday while perusing the aisles at your local office supply store, either. The standalone USB Duplicator does an excellent job of describing its sole purpose in life with its title, but we'll humor you, anyway. This box comes in two flavors -- 1 master to 9 targets or 1 master to 24 targets -- which allows USB 1.1 / 2.0 thumb drives and / or USB hard drives to be hooked up and mirrored with extraordinarily little effort. Reportedly, the system is mostly automatic, and it will play nice with "all major file systems." Think you could put one of these to good use? Yeah, we're sure you could -- but how long will it take you to recoup the $2,999.99 (for the 10-port version, no less) you'll be laying down up front?

[Via I4U News]

[bigassmuffin @ Dec 13th 2007 7:56PM]

damnit, now I have to sell my stock shares of Kanguru before this thing is for sale!

[webterractive @ Dec 13th 2007 7:57PM]

Air Canada will actually be using something like that system in order to put their CBC daily news offering on all their XM Aircraft. You can recouperate the cost, some commercials on these showings can cost up $18,000 a minute.

[John McKenna @ Dec 13th 2007 8:01PM]

Damn useless. I have 3 USB 2.0 hubs which each hold 4 devices. If i plug one into one of the 2 USB ports on my laptop, I will have thirteen ports, minus the one that I had to plug the thirs hub into makes 12 ports. Pfbbt.

[Enfaw @ Dec 13th 2007 8:17PM]

I can see it now..

Geek Squad, we got a BSOD

MOVE OUT! *they all pull out thier usb sticks*

[imacmatt09 @ Dec 13th 2007 8:20PM]

Does this work with dongles? ;)

[James Ollier @ Dec 13th 2007 9:02PM]

That is a very good point!

[ace_spades @ Dec 13th 2007 8:28PM]

couldn't you just plug in a large number of USB hubs into the 10 port version, allowing you to get more copying for less money (even though it is insanely expensive)?

[m16 @ Dec 13th 2007 8:34PM]

what does this do that a USB hub(s) and copy/paste wont?

Its pretty stupid if you ask me.

[Michael LaFramboise @ Dec 13th 2007 8:49PM]

I hear it also has a convenient "burn money" button

[paul34 @ Dec 13th 2007 9:06PM]

Hmm, I might just be being silly... but mass reproduction and little need for human intervention might be one.

You know, actually, I must be wrong. Silly Microsoft wasting all their money on factories pressing CDs of Vista. Why not just have someone in China individually copy each DVD with some software and an ISO, and some Wal-Mart DVD Rs? You have the best ideas, man!

[darx23 @ Dec 13th 2007 9:51PM]

Paul34, think before you speak.

Pressing discs and copying information from a usb drive are two completely separate projects. When is the last time you saw a cd burning hub? Exactly.

Anyone could purchase a few cheap usb hubs and create a simple batch file to copy all the information to each drive. Although this device takes out the middle man (a computer) it is nowhere near cheap enough to warrant it.

[DarkLightConnection @ Dec 13th 2007 11:50PM]

And who said you need human intervention (on the software side)?

You can make a script that copy&paste automatically each time a blank drive is inserted

And, who said it saves you human intervention?

A human is needed to physically swap the USBs

If you have a robot that swaps them on this thing, I don't think it will be that of a problem to re-program the robot to swap them from the HUB...

[BigDaddyM @ Dec 13th 2007 8:36PM]

What people are paying for is automation.

Sure you can get a big hub and manually copy everything over in a clucky and messy way and if you only need it once, do that. If you do this often, in an commercial environment, this does make sense.

It would be faster if it truly copies all 10 drives simultaneously verses a computers traffic conflicts on so many drives...
M

[Trent @ Dec 13th 2007 8:40PM]

Ya know, automation isn't difficult. It would take about 3 minutes to write a linux shell script that sends a dd command to duplicate everything plugged into usb port 1 to another port and it wouldn't be difficult to have it run the command everytime something is plugged into one of the other ports.

[brian welch @ Dec 14th 2007 10:00AM]

@Trent - I was thinking the exact same thing when I was reading the article. Except you wouldn't even need to be in linux - a batch script in windows would do the same thing.

Step 1) Fill up hub ports
Step 2) Push Up, Enter.

[Trent @ Dec 13th 2007 8:37PM]

I'll take the cheap used linux computer with usb hubs or extra addin cards for 1/1000th that price Alex.

It doesn't take much to type dd /dev/usb001 /dev/usb002 (not only that but dd is TRUELY unaware of the data being copied, it's a bit per bit copy) a few dozen times and given the price they are asking I would wager you could pay yourself quite the wage to do it. Heck you would spend more time plugging and unplugging than hitting the up arrow a dozen times.

[John Stracke @ Dec 14th 2007 11:26AM]

"not only that but dd is TRUELY unaware of the data being copied, it's a bit per bit copy" -- that's probably what Kanguru is doing. As long as the targets are the same size as the master, it'll be fine. (If they're larger than the master, you'll waste space, but it'll still work.)

[KC @ Dec 13th 2007 8:45PM]

I bet if you were the poor bloke who had to sit infront of a PC to duplicate USB thumbdrives for tradeshows,etc, you wouldn't be complaining about this product.

[MARSHAK @ Dec 13th 2007 11:21PM]

until they lay you off when they realize that for the cost of one of these and getting someone to do it as an extra task they can save..oh i dont know..your entire salary. which is actually probably a good thing if it's your job to duplicate USB drives all day.

[Rob @ Dec 13th 2007 9:30PM]

Something like this will be useful in a few years when flash-ram becomes dirt cheap and we discontinue using optical media. That day is coming soon.

[Ollie @ Dec 13th 2007 10:01PM]

Is anyone else surprised that this thing only comes in 10 and 24 port variations? I would think if you had 3k to spend on something an old computer could do quite easily (as mentioned above) you would be in the market for MASS automation, like 100 sticks or more at a time? If you can only make 9 copies at a time, you still gotta pay someone to change the drives over every 10 or 15 minutes, however long it takes.

Stupid product, it's the answer to a problem that never existed.

[Severian @ Dec 13th 2007 10:51PM]

Let me know when it comes with a stacking autoloader.

[XGM @ Dec 13th 2007 10:51PM]

Ok so i should sell a 2,500$ eeePC, with 2, 12 port USB hubs and the linux script i made. You get the same but 500$ less, win win situation.

[tn @ Dec 13th 2007 11:32PM]

cant wait for the sansa express to drop $20 in price for this thing to be worth anything...

then again i like the eeepc dongle version

cheaper and way more uses

[Marcus @ Dec 14th 2007 4:00PM]

I don't think the market will be big, but I think it will exist.

For example if you wanted to offer live mp3 of the concert someone just attended this drive can put them on flash drives so they can by one on their way out.

[Ed @ Dec 14th 2007 9:09PM]

This device is not all that bad actually. It is too pricey though. The posting about the Aleratec model is a great example.

Sure there are a lot of peeps that can find ways to automate on a linux machine for cheap. Problem is that if you are in the market for one of these products, you probably don't have the technical expertise or the time.

Technicians, Programmers, and Linux Geeks are very poor critics of products. These product lines were not made for us. Of course we could find a way to do it cheaper, faster, better. But then if we had the balls we would make a product and charge for it.

Do you want to sit there for hours doing it? Probably not. Do you want to pay some kid $7 an hour to do it for you? Most Likely.

Do you think a kid that could use the DD command on a Linux box would sit there and do it for you? Hell No.

Do you think some kid, that didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground that could just as easily be picking his nose then picking up the lettuce with same hand to put it on your whopper before wrapping it up and handing it to you, would want to sit in an air conditioned room doing it for the same wage as a crappy fast food place? Pretty Damn Good Chance.

So if I had to make hundreds or thousands of copies of USB flash drives, I would want to get a system like this.

1) No windows interface, which reduces the time it takes for the system to even recognize the drive and mount it.
2) No Linux interface, which just requires flat out skill and intelligence to operate at all.

A simple tool that any moron (including Monkeys that apparently do math better then humans now) could operate repeatedly.

I can calculate my base cost on the USB drive to be the 1) The cost of the USB stick, 2) The cost of the "Monkey", and 3) The cost of the Monkey's Tool.

I would bet that in the long run it is cheaper for me to get this product (The Aleratec) and not have to deal with it then it would be to spend a lot of time doing it myself or training some idiot to use Linux. Windows is not even a solution at all. The base cost of the hardware and license fees is going to be at least $500 anyways.

It just bugs me a bit when technical people turn their noses down at something before using their brain a little bit. That's because most technicians don't understand business, marketing, or the end users one little bit. You guys need to remember that the end user (the market) is the most stupid fucking idiot on the planet. Can barely remember to breathe. Don't believe me? Ask a buddy doing tech support in a Call Center. But do it quick, cuz every guy I knew eventually went to to tall building with an assault rifle and a scope.

[steve @ Dec 15th 2007 12:02PM]

As someone who does work in this industry of duplicating USB drives, I know how much it does suck to do it in Windows, and how it sucks less to do it in Linux, but it isn't the greatest.

How many of you have inserted hundreds of devices into USB ports on your computer? or USB hub? I have burnt out more USB ports on computers and entire hubs (like the $50 7-8 port hubs). It makes duplication very difficult. Also, Windows copies files slowly! A duplicator would be operating of a RISC processor and able to copy the files at a much faster rate to more devices, and being able to have more devices connected as well. We have issues with our duplication process if we plug in more than 14 USB drives (plus mouse and keyboard) because the USB bus gets severly overloaded.

We are actually looking in to getting the 60 USB port duplicator, but it is over $6K, but are leaning toward the costs being justified.

And to the above poster who said "When is the last time you saw a cd burning hub? Exactly.". You obviously have never seen a CD duplicator. They are extremely popular and have been in every office I have worked in for the last few years.

[Technowiz @ Jan 8th 2008 8:17PM]

More bang for the buck is available:

USB Flash Drives - http://www.aleratec.com/al1usbfldrco.html

USB Flash Cards - http://www.aleratec.com/al16flmecaco.html