I don’t know that a newer drive cloner will necessarily be faster. Personally, if I’d successfully used the one I already have and wasn’t concerned about it having been damaged (mainly due to heat or moisture) then I would use it instead. If it might be damaged or had given me issues, I’d get a new one.
After replacing all of the drives there is something you’ll need to do to tell it to use their full capacity. From reading an answer to this post, it looks like what you’ll need to do is to select “Change RAID Mode,” then keep RAID 1 selected, keep the same disks, and then on the next screen move the slider to use the drives’ full capacities.
Paired with allowing people who own the original to upgrade for $10 (and I’m assuming something similar in the UK) when they’re charging $50 for the remaster if you don’t have the original, that makes sense. They’re just closing a loophole.
I’d much rather they double the existing game’s price than for them to charge $25-$30 for the upgrade or to even just not have one outright.
It sucks for anyone who’d been planning to play the original and who just hadn’t bought it yet, but used prices for discs should still be low, so only the subset of those people who have disc-less machines are really impacted.