Mediaman,

Thanks for your suggestions. I'll verify your comments with the system and make the necessary changes. As for the idea of wiping skipped sectors on the fly, I guess that works if you aren't planning to bounce around the disk or the drive doesn't die before the image process is complete. It would be nice to have the ability to turn this feature off. What happens if you were imaging with another device, decided to switch to Atola Imager and it started overwriting sectors that were read by another device with zeros? Having jumped back and forth between DeepSpar Disk Imager and Data Extractor, the first thing I do is to tell them not to overwrite unread sectors.

When it comes to destination drives, I prefer to play it safe and only use wiped drives for my clones.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

thats a fair point i had not considered, but is a moot point for me as I only use atola.

Interesting to imagine how it works. Dmitry could answer this question, but I imagine a sector is only overwritten (blanked) on the first non-read, i would hope. Then, only RE-READ sectors (that were not read in the first passes) are attempted thereon. With that logic, Atola could never over-right itself. But switching to another extractor (that did not know which sectors had previously been read OK) what you describe would happen.

The "exported" non read sector list (CSV type file) would have to be imported into your new imagining solution. I have no idea if that is possible.

I'd like to see some input from Dmitry and Walter here as I'm the kinda guy who doesn't like reading manuals

One of the really nice features with DDI is that I can modify the config so that pressing spacebar jumps X number of sectors. This works well when doing a first pass on a drive, it helps me to determine if there is a large area of bad sectors. However, with Atola, I can't do this - so it tries to read a sectors, skips it depending on the config, goes to next sector and so on. It's nice to be able to jump 10,000 sectors and see if the pattern continues. This allows us to quickly determine how badly damaged the drive is.

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Data Recovery Ireland

Hey CK, but what you describe is automatic in atola. (no, not the space bar). When doing the first pass atola will jump XX sectors after waiting YY seconds trying to read them. If you don't like the way it's advancing, you can change the XX and YY in real time via the menu.

I agree though, the space bar, or some simple "fast forward" would be cool too!

The point is that I like more control than it being just "automatic". Going into the menu and changing it is a PITA. Also, it'll stop the image and power off the target hdd if I do this if I remember? Automatic isn't always good. I'm sure it's pretty easy for Dmitry to implement the feature request.

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Data Recovery Ireland

Not only is it nice to jump forward, but it is nice to jump ahead and flip into reverse (in PIO mode, if necessary). Automatic is good for simple straight forward projects, which might be more common for others. For us, we spend a lot of time trying to clean up key areas which just isn't possible with Atola (yet).

I see that StarTech has a couple of low cost drive duplicator docks. For a couple hundred dollars, I'm going to order one to see how they make out for simple projects, like a Seagate 7200.11 duplication after a firmware fix.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

The "Wipe unprocessed sectors" is a DeepSpar option after the mirror is complete. I've added another line for "Wipe unprocessed sectors on the fly" where they both say yes. I'm still trying to find out how to wipe a drive using Atola.

After more thought about using a "dirty" drive for a clone. What happens if you start the mirror process you get 20% from the front and 30% in reverse then the drive completely crashes. How do you deal with the 50% between the 20% and the 70% mark? Can you ensure with 100% certainty that you will be able to recover some of your client's data without tainting it with someone else's?

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Outside mirroring a blank drive to the destination, I cannot find any way to wipe a drive on the Atola Imager. If there is an option to do this, please let me know how.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

come on dude!! the "prepare destination" window. What version of Atola do you have?

http://www.atola.com/products/insight/d ... ation.html

I thought I got the most up-to-date version from the Atola website. However, my screens don't have the sidebar option that shows on your screen. Perhaps I somehow managed to get an older version. What version is it at? I've been running 1.4.4.31437

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

That's the full Atola product that mediaman is referring to. Luke, my screens are the exact same as yours.

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Data Recovery Ireland

Thanks...I just want to be sure that I'm comparing the correct product. Now that we have the confirmed...where is this "prepare destination" window found? I have a drive connected to the destination side and no drive connected to the source and would like to wipe all the sectors on the destination.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

I just tried a live project on the Atola Imager. The drive was skipping as much as it was reading on the first round...both forward and reverse. I had to create a new session in order to go back to sector 0 with different settings (this was annoying, because now I have to re-read the sectors I already read just to see if I can read the skipped sectors with different settings.) What I found was the drive couldn't read hardly anything and that this looked like a can of worms.

So, I switched over to DeepSpar Disk Imager. We did a head map, tested the heads/media and found 1 of the 4 heads was not reading. At this point we decided to stop and quote the client. The next step will be to mirror the 3 good heads before changing them and then target the one unread surface.

Again, don't feel like I'm attacking Atola Imager. I just think it has a long ways to go before it is truly worthy of getting into the ring with DeepSpar Disk Imager. Hopefully, my comparison and the comments in this thread will help improve both products...assuming that their developers are watching.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Hi Luke, I had a similar job today, a Hitachi HTS541010 and I gave up with Atola and switched it to DDI, one bad head - Imaged remaining 3 heads and carried out HS and got all data. Now, I'm sure I could have just done the HS and imaged it with Atola, but it was a risk I wasn't willing to take with a valuable customer hdd.

I'd like to get some idea of the development roadmap for Atola from Dmitry so I don't give up on it in pure frustration.

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Data Recovery Ireland

While I agree fully that there are plenty of features that still need to be added to Atola; I think there are many situations being mentioned where extra steps are being taken that arn't REALLY needed.

True, it is a great thing to be able to image by selective heads to get the good data before you do full HS, but if you are skillful with HS like myself...there is no risk involved in HS. Especially on a simple drive like travelstar.


Now on a WD or Seagate 3.5inch HDD...i would welcome this feature with open arms to be able to image good heads first before attempting HS.

I feel this comment is somewhat irrelevant. Either the functionality is there or it isn't. Imaging the good heads and then doing a HS is about risk abatement.

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Data Recovery Ireland

Luke ,
Excellent Effort Great Job ,I Am Saving For Deepspar ,though I think The Hd Dupe Is Also Very Good Cloner Missing Some Features .

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Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com

I am only saying that I wouldn't call the situation mentioned "Risk abatement" because I feel there is a very low risk of HS on the drive mentioned. Where on a drive such as a high capacity WD desktop, there is a high risk, so this feature would THEN become much more relavent.

either way you are right that either the feature is there or it is not, and I agree that this feature should be of the highest priority to have, for those "high risk" HS situations, and even to avoid having to do a HS at all and saving you the time, and possibly money from having to locate and purchase a donor HDD/ part.

Prepare Target function is available only in Atola Insight at the moment. But I think it may appear in the next release of Atola Imager.

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Vitaliy Mokosiy
CTO, Atola Technology

Should I be insulted?


The problem is, what if I don't want to overwrite unread sectors? You should allow the user to choose if they want this feature enabled.



The problem with this is that it is very complicated. It would be nice to tell the imager to start at sector 'x' each time I restart the imaging process...with sector 'x' defaulting to the last sector read. This way, if I want to jump into reverse and go back through the section I just read, I can do so quickly. Also, if I just want to skip ahead and restart the process at a different spot on the drive, I can do so without a lot of hassle.

I think you have a great start. Hopefully, after all the new features are added, someone else will supply me with a system to re-evaluate so that I can update my comparison chart.

Luke

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery