We got out Atola Insight suite in the beginning of 2009.

So far we have analyzed about 500 drives in it.

Atola insight have not in any case been able to repair damaged firmware. We have used it mainly for the imaging function (which is great) and for the terminal connectivity for Seagate drives. Atola constantly reports that "more manual checking has to be done" when running the "automatic checkup". Even though i know that there is a fw error (caused by me via salvationdata tools for experimental reasons)

Are anyone else experiencing the same issues (atola not repairing firmware).

I was thinking, maybe it is because we are in Europe and there are differences of drives sold here and in US?

And oh, the serial connector broke off after the 20 or so first drives. So we had to build our own

So my conclusion is; if you need a good imager and dont require any fw repairs it is a great tool. Of course it could be my lack of competence that is the biggest problem. But you have to remember that it is marketed and sold as a "automatic" and easy firmware repair tool.

Hugs from Kerstin

Had mine since the beta release and so far have had only one drive recovery job that was an issue with firmware- and just my luck- it was a seagate 7200.11 where support drops off a cliff . It was far beyond just a terminal job- so this tool failed here. So far only abot 25 jobs through it. The latest software has advanced so far in imaging since V .9!

I started in November 2008 with the Insight USB and upgraded in October 2009 to the Ethernet unit.

Allready at that time I recognised that I deeply depend on that unit - as of each PC or laptop coming
into our (repair) shop - the hdd´s will be tested. Its done easily and quick - even from staff without any
DR-knowledge.

I was in the impression (and this was confirmed by Dmitry in his answer on HDDGURU) that the Imager
is mainly directed to Repair Shops - and not to the DR market. Funny to see, that it is compared with the
more expensive Deepspare Imager - that looks like a request of the market to offer an 2nd version
of the Imager with extended features for the DR market..... like an "Atola DR Imager" .... ???

+++

we got usb insight last June, we have PC repair store, we also do data recovery, we have PC3000 UDMA, Deepspar imager and Salvatiodata Data Compass and HDD Doctor suite.

Everytime customer come in bring external HDD want get data out, if i plug in Atola Insight when this HDD has FAT partition, i can't get data out, Mac drive, linux drive no way. Only NTFS data can get out. When we bought this, we have been told it will upgrade soon, but we wait almost a year still not upgrade, and when we bought this unit, the saler said upgrade software is free, now we worry after one year if still not upgrade these FAT, HFS+, and EXT recovery function, we need pay money to upgrade software. Now this unit for us only use as image function but we paid double of Deepspar imager price. and we can buy two Data Compass unit which can do all of these function.

The file recovery functionality of the Atola has been lowered in priority. The reasoning is that for relatively cheap you can obtain data recovery software such as R-studio which can perform file recovery well.

Atola would like to put their focus on adding functionality to the firmware repair, and imaging capabilities of the unit first. Because these are things that are more unique, and cannot be obtained, and added so easily.



Regards,

Some good news for you. File recovery from FAT partitions will appear in Atola Insight in late spring/early summer.

_________________
Vitaliy Mokosiy
CTO, Atola Technology

KerstinF
I bet you're trying to use automatic firmware recovery which will only work for select models (it is out fault, however, that it is not very clear from the software itself; we will have to clarify it).

Please see this page: http://atola.com/products/insight/supported-drives.html
(scroll down to Automatic firmware recovery works for the following models:)

Automatic checkup algorithms only work on hard drives in the "from Customer" state (meaning you shouldn't try any other software/recovery attempt before you run automatic diagnostics). It won't work for drives damaged by other firmware recovery tools (it will just tell you that manual diagnostics is needed).

I apologize about the serial connector issue; we have completely re-designed it and all Ethernet units (and newest USB units) come with new, much better cable.

PCBoB
As Vitaliy mentioned, FAT support will be there very soon (it is currently being tested). Ext3 is next on our list.

_________________
Dmitry

I lso had an Atola from the beta test period, and upgrade it to ethernet unit as soon as it comes...and mostly use it for imaging. Very fast.

this has to be the best imager on the market

it needs to take on the deepspar
once it can get select head or remapping

then your going to see sales going throu the roof.

Sorry, this simply is not the case. Unless you've tried Deepspar, you cannot compare.

Still needs a lot of work to get anywhere close to DDI.

_________________
Data Recovery Ireland

ok yes deepspar is still the number 1 machine for sure.

but you need a motherboard which needs to works with the unit flawless


but once they release the selective head then it be close
later on in the summer.

This is incorrect information. Yes, earlier revisions of the DeepSpar Imager required specific system boards for better performance, but this has been resolved ages ago. They now include a PCI-E IDE/SATA adapter with their package. So, now the only system board requirement is a PCI-E slot.

I agree that selective head imaging will help improve the Atola product, but without more control over the actual imaging process, I'd like to suggest that it should be lower on the priority scale.

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

but i know people who got the unit and it does not work with some motherboards
only certain types

I have two of those units too. But, those are old units that are no longer produced. If Atola were to add imaging by heads to their product, would I be legit in saying, "Atola can't image by head"? That would be incorrect and not fair for Atola.

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery