The U.S. District Judge Susan Illston is forcing PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz to surrender his computer’s hard drive to Sony to sift through in order to retrieve information relating to the hacking of their product.

But they’re not stopping there. Sony says they’ll sue anyone who posts the code, has sent out an undisclosed number of DMCA “takedown” notices to websites demanding the code’s removal, and is asking the judge to force Google and Twitter to surrender IP addresses and information of everyone who’s viewed or commented on Hotz’ jailbreak video and the hackers who first unveiled a limited version of the hack on Twitter in December.

Hotz created the code to allow for home-brewed games on Sony’s Playstation console without allowing pirated games, and posted the code on his website last month as well as a how-to video on YouTube. Sony then launched a suit on Digital Millennium Copyright Act civil allegations, accusing him of trafficking in devices that circumvent controls meant to protect copyrighted works.

Orders to surrender the full contents of a defendant’s computer hard drive are common-place in cases relating to child pornography or when a journalist has kept the names of sources confidential in criminal situations. But this is sure to set a strong precedent for future hacker cases, despite the fact that GeoHot won the Apple suit after doing exactly the same thing to jailbreak the iPhone.

“The conduct Mr. Hotz has engaged in is still covered by the DMCA,” said Sony attorney James Gilliland, pointing out that game consoles and mobile phones fall under different laws.

This fact was underscored last month when Microsoft publicly invited GeoHot to jailbreak the new Windows Phone 7.

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Now selling for $149 directly from Addonics.

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Aleratec Portable Harddrive Duplicator with dual Hitachi 2.5" Sata drives - Photo: Mobile Magazine

During my infancy of evolutionary computer tech-wizardry, being sculpted into the guru that I am today, I was a bench tech for a local computer service company in the town I grew up in.  Repairing workstations and servers that came off the line was always a day in hell, finding which failed part was the cause of disaster was rarely an easy task with Windows NT.   It was a godsend when the customer wanted an actual new computer and not their old beast repaired.  This would only involve a data transfer, but the actual OS and applications would still have to be re-installed; customer data, documents and other business assets were backed up and transferred by another working system, then ultimately to the new system.

Work orders would come in with a dozen or so identical systems for various locations throughout the clients office.  An entirely new office would sometimes call for 15-20 machines, this meant a lot of overtime, cardboard box unpacking, repetitive next, next, next, and “would you like to continue?” questions being answered from that cold, and lonely blue installation screen.  At the time we never figured drive cloning to be an option, now that I think back it could have been easily done with a dedicated computer and some third-party software; but with the company billing out at $90 an hour I guess saving time wasn’t really a priority.

When I first saw Aleratec’s 1:1 harddrive PortaCruiser I was totally in awe.  I thought, damn, if I had this thing back in the day I would have been the shop wizard in no time.   My first impressions were that it was portable, so hey, were Mobile so we can definitely check it out.  And it is portable, lightweight, and doesn’t take much other than a standard power plug to get it running.  It has multiple interfaces for either an IDE harddrive, SATA, even USB 2.0 and can make perfect copies of the drives from any, to any, of the multiple interfaces.   Basically what once needed a computer to duplicate with, can now be done standalone with a tiny device that will fit in your gear bag.

Aleratec 1:1 HDD PortaCruiser - Photo: Mobile Magazine

The Aleratec 1:1 HDD PortaCruiser – Hard Disk Drive Duplicator and RAID is an essential tool for building, upgrading and backing up computer hard drives. It requires no computer to run, eliminating the need to tie up a system for hours running dedicated software to duplicate a hard disk, or lugging one on site to service a customers machine.  I wasn’t overly impressed by the speed. It sat at 55 MB/s in cloning mode; I was hoping for a bit of a faster transfer rate since I had matched Hitachi 7200RPM 2.5” SATA drives for my test, but this was a sector-by-sector clone so keep that in mind.   

Bottom Line

The ability to make sector-by-sector backups and copies of RAID 0, RAID 1, JBOD (Spanning) or Normal disk configurations is critical for computer technicians.  Allowing you to “Compare, Prescan, and Erase” drives without a machine will definitely give your company and mobile technicians an advantage over competitors.  The price of $250 isn’t bad considering it replaces an entire computer.

Specifications

·  Sector-by-sector standalone hard disk drive cloning
·  Dual Disk RAID Controller via USB 2.0 with 4 modes:RAID 0, RAID 1, JBOD (Spanning), Normal
·  Supports 2.5” and 3.5” SATA I/II hard disk drives
·  Supports IDE hard disk drives with IDE cables (not included)
·  Compact and Portable
·  Supports Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, Mac 10.3 or later, Linux
·  Power Requirements: 100-240V 50-60Hz 1.5A

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If you’re an IT Technician or part of your companies hardware deployment team, nothing takes longer then setting up the software for each and every individual workstation.  If your on a service call at a of  clients remote location and they run into drive problems, its never an easy situation to backup all of their data before popping in a new drive.

Just released this week, Aleratec’s 1:1 HDD PortaCruiser is a portable, lightweight external hard disk drive duplicator that allows you to easily clone a 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA I/II hard disk drives for backing up.  You can even clone from IDE to SATA or vice-versa.  It includes a Dual Disk RAID Controller which allows for 2 drives to be hooked up simultaneously, connect it to your PC via USB and it becomes an external storage adapter.  With support for Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, Mac 10.3+, and Linux, you will have most of your bases covered.

A 2-line LCD display gives you access to the features, and important status information and processes. With one push of the button, the 1:1 HDD PortaCruiser start to clone the drive sector-by-sector process that includes disk partition and boot sector information.

Aleratec’a 1:1 HDD PortaCruiser weighs only 8 oz and has a pricetag of $249.

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