Bought a DeepSpar for my independent IT contracting business

[othersteve]

Thanks guys. Yep, as we speak I am imaging a drive which began its process on the 20th of February (a week and a half ago). I started off using DRE to image the partition info (FAT32) and then selected all folders and files from there for imaging, leaving blank space out. Then I did a Media Test and discovered that Head 0 is the one having trouble reading (reads slowly with some errors occasionally, but it does still read). I disabled Head 0 and imaged all of the Head 1 areas corresponding to the FAT32 filesystem, which (predictably) happened very quickly.

Now I am going back on a Secondary Pass for the Head 0 areas with a 1500ms read timeout, PIO, in reverse, and I'm collecting the data at an average of 10KB/s. Fortunately it's only an 80GB drive!

So yes, I am learning very quickly and am well on my way to being the only real local alternative to the big pros for Tier 1/Tier 2 data recovery when mechanical failure of some sort (read instability, head degradation) is at play. It may end up being a very busy market for me!

Thanks to all again for the advice thus far.

[SquaL]

Definitely cannot go wrong with DDI. I am curious are you getting any read errors on this second pass?

[othersteve]

Just a UNC here and there, but the Read Ignoring ECC using just 11 retries seems to be doing the trick. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am with this device.

Now I am starting to wish I had shelled out the extra money for a version 4 instead!

Oh, and the network add-on is amazing. I'm not sure how I would even use this baby without it.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Just a UNC here and there, but the Read Ignoring ECC using just 11 retries seems to be doing the trick. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am with this device.

Now I am starting to wish I had shelled out the extra money for a version 4 instead!

Oh, and the network add-on is amazing. I'm not sure how I would even use this baby without it.

steve ,
can you post some pictures also would be great as i am also planning to buy this real soon

[Agent]

Version 4 is the same price IIRC, they just phased out 3 and phased in 4.

[Nick_CT]

Version 4 is the same price IIRC, they just phased out 3 and phased in 4.

Version 3 was offered at a lower price recently as 4 was about to be released.

[Nick_CT]

Oh, and the network add-on is amazing. I'm not sure how I would even use this baby without it.

Since getting mine I have never been able to get the network add-on to work. New router, new NIC, new ethernet cable, new everything. A massive amount of troubleshooting e-mails back and forth from the DDI support people and still not resolved.

I'm quite annoyed as I can see it's value (network addon) and am still unable to use it.

[TaskManager]

I am wondering which device Ontrack uses for cloning. In videos one could see some imager having either dos / windows interface.
it could be custom built software.

[DrFaustus]

im still debating on the network addon, my only problem is the DDI , is in a room with no network activity so i'm conteplating

[loki]

im still debating on the network addon, my only problem is the DDI , is in a room with no network activity so i'm conteplating

You could buy powerline adaptors one for that room & one that is in the same room as router, Then just network cable from the adapters to the devices?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=powerl ... 8QOCjMX8Dg


loki

[northwind]

or use Access Points.

[buster80]

Its not great over wireless. Takes ages to scan from within DRE (Deepspar Recovery Environment)

stick to cables

[Alan2]

I own a small part time data recovery service that is a one man operation. I started my part time data recovery business with a Ninja Kaze imager and lost many customers the first year due to the limitations of the imager not recognizing at least 80% of the drives brought to my service. I slowly added data recovery equipment including a mini clean room. Now I do all levels of recovery. I suggest doing the same. Start slowly with just the imager and slowly buy equipment. You will find that with a single imager alone, you will lose many easy recovery jobs like simple firmware repair on Seagate 7200.11 drives that you can fix in a few minutes with a Salvation Data HD Doctor. You can buy the whole set of HD Doctors for a little over $3000.00, a fraction of what a PC3000 costs and fix many firmware related problems. With SSD drives now available, you will never pay for a PC3000 before mechanical drives or the tool itself is outdated or obsolete. DeepSpar makes good products, but a PC3000 at $10,000 - $15,000 is a no go for most small data recovery services that have a limited number of recovery jobs. The only way a PC3000 will pay for itself is in a high volume recovery lab. I now pick and choose the physical recovery jobs that I do. Too many customers in this bad economy are do it yourselfers that do not want to spend any money on recovery and destroy the heads running data recovery software until the heads are toast.
Just my opinion.

[falther]

@Alan2

Sorry, I have to contradict - at least in part:

Being lucky to live on the side where the PC3K UDMA was cheaper allready
in the last years than in America - there is now no price argument any more
against PC3000 UDMA - its the same as in Europe.

And whether its now the Deepspar Imager or the Atola Imagers or the Atola
Insight - they pay themselves in a very, very short period just because the
most "defects" (I see in my shop) are not working PC´s + laptops because
of hdd with a few defect sectors.

Usually a 1:1 clone with bad sector handling to a new drive gets the system
alive again and creates a happy to pay customer.

The easiest way to do that is with the tools from Atola - you dont have to
be the high trained DR technician, but with a little time and training or for
the DR specialists - the Deepspar Imager is a very, very fine product too.

The better the tools you use, the quicker the return on investment.

+++

[buster80]

you will never pay for a PC3000 before mechanical drives or the tool itself is outdated or obsolete

This simply is not the case

[Nick_CT]

you will never pay for a PC3000 before mechanical drives or the tool itself is outdated or obsolete

This simply is not the case

Agreed. Mechanical drives will live on for a long time, look at the millions of drives the HDD manufacturers are shipping.

Some good news on my previous posts about the network add-on not working:

I have tried DRE on a different machine and it sees the DDI and the network add-on functions perfectly. The issue is with the desktop machine I am trying to access the DDI from, some network config.

Thanks to Luke for the assistance.

[DrFaustus]

im still debating on the network addon, my only problem is the DDI , is in a room with no network activity so i'm conteplating

You could buy powerline adaptors one for that room & one that is in the same room as router, Then just network cable from the adapters to the devices?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=powerl ... 8QOCjMX8Dg


loki

im looking into the powerline solution, probally go with it & use a switch to expand the ports


also, very true on the PC3K subject, .. me personally, not very much business to warrant a PC3K... but i do alright with a doctor suite... everybody in my town want the "no data no pay" scenario.... understandable but a $7,000 still need to be paid even if i place a bad hard drive that could short out very expensive equipment

[Touchclarity]

I too started my DR business with the SD Doctors (and other SD tools) and I do admit that I struggled with them. The software was very buggy and unfriendly, and the manuals and technical support bordering on useless. I took the decision some time ago to purchase the PC3K solution and my success rate soared, the unit quite literally paid for itself within 3 months. I'm now at the point that I will be purchasing another PC3K very soon to cope with an expanding workload.

This was the best "Risk" that I ever took for my DR business..