Tech Support in North America

[lcoughey]

For those of you in North America who use the SD products, what is your experience with tech support. I've been trying to play with these tools in hopes of doing a comparison with PC3000+DE, DDI and Atola Imager. Thus far, without even getting into the products themselves, I cannot recommend these tools to anyone in North America because of the lack of support. It might not be so bad if the forums were active and the manuals were useful. But, they are not. When trying to diagnose a client's project, waiting more than a week for e-mail response is not acceptable. Perhaps I'm spoiled with DeepSpar's tech support that is second to none, but even some acknowledgement from Salvation Data would be nice.

[thatdellguy]

There really is no way to compare SD to AceLabs. SD is at least five or more years behind the competition and likes to keep it that way. Suggestions take years and years to implement. Someone has to almost threaten SD in the hopes they will do something. Simple features like SMART and soft/hard reset thru the device are finally here after four years. The forum is a barren wasteland of newbie’s with no clue how to recover data. Today the forum is mostly used for reporting problems with the buggy software. I have tried for years now to help SD and they refuse to speak with me professionally. All I get today from them is "Hi how are you, have you tried our new...." or "We are displeased with your posts on the forum".

[lcoughey]

I'm beginning to wonder if they are ignoring me. I have never had any delay with a sales inquiry, but as for technical support, it is as though that department doesn't exist or they are just too overwhelmed with all the support requests.

[quasimodo]

or they are just too overwhelmed with all the support requests.

This is certainly part of the problem

SD markets primarily to a different sector. The Companies and individuals that are experienced in DR usually use Ace and are more or less happy with their products or they have developed some in house solutions. So therefore there really isn't much of a market for SD. Their strategy has been" Well since the market for DR is already occupied and we do not have a technically superior product, the only way to sell is to create new DR companies and techs to sell our stuff too". What they did not calculate is that now every dick and tom that they sold their solutions too are asking them to fix their drives and help with each recovery. That must be fun

[pclab]

Hi

I'm one of the guys who bought SD Doctor Suite.
After all these answers, I see that I have made a mistake buying them... Are they really so bad??
Have I trowed my money away??
I have the tools for about 1 week and I'm starting to know what all of that means. The manuals are a bit confusing, for a newbie in DR. I work and repair PC's for about 14 years, but when it comes to HD's, I'm very green. I could recover some logical problems with some success but I want to work with physical problems.

About tech support, I have them on MSN. When the tools came, I already connected a Seagate HDD that I have malfunctioning for test. I asked for help and they connected to my pc by teamviewer.

[lcoughey]

If you aren't an experienced data recovery tech, you might as well have the Salvation Data tools. There is a lot more to physical recovery than the hardware tools. So, unless you plan to get trained by someone who already knows the ins and outs of data recovery, you can expect to spend the next couple of years learning how to do data recovery. I don't recommend practicing on client's drives.

[pclab]

Crap....


You're really getting me down...

[pclab]

PCLab, are you new to data recovery ?
Are you working for a data recovery house in Portugal or just adding "Data Recovery" services to your computer buisness ?

Salvation Tools are cheap tools for a starter and if you read the forum and practice allot you will be able at least to fix some firmware with them

Did you manage to fix your Seagate drive ?

Hi Splidit

Thanks for your reply.

I'm starting on my own adding DR to my business. In my area there is none Lab that does this and I thought it would be great to get more clients with these.

About the Seagate, I have a couple of disks of some brands to practice. I hope that with the help of the Gurus here and some stuff that I can get from SD, I can finnaly start to do some repairs.
My maily problem now, is to understand all of the buttons and functions from the tools. I tought it would be like some one-click repair

But it's not because of that that I'm gonna give up...

Thanks

[lcoughey]

I'm sure you aren't the only person in this world who bought a few cheap data recovery tools and figured that you could just start a data recovery business. Unfortunately, that would be the same as someone going to a surgical supply store and buying a surgery table, a scalpel and a mask then jump into offering open heart surgery. You won't have much success, even if you see a video on youtube, until you have training.

If you want to buy yourself some time to learn, while building the data recovery business. Partner up with a lab in your region where you can outsource the projects to. While doing that, take some time and play on your own hard drives. When you feel confident that you are ready to do the task yourself, you can then consider working on your client's drives. You may also find that your clients aren't willing to pay the bucks for the other lab's services, in which case you may ask them if they'll let you have the drive to play with for R & D. Offer them a really low rate if you are successful.

As for buying SD tools versus PC3000. I think you were right in this case. I don't believe that the guys at Ace Labs want their tools at every Dick, Jane and Harry's computer shop, nor do they want to teach their clients the absolute basics about hard drive mechanics. Once you have spent some time playing with the SD tools and gain a better understanding of how hard drives work, you can then consider spending the money on PC3000.

However, in the meantime, I don't think anyone can ever lose in buying a DeepSpar Imager if they are considering doing any significant amount of data recovery. I had a project that came in yesterday and, for some reason, decided to try the Data Compass on the drive after I fixed the ROYL PCB issues. After a quick glimpse at the file system, followed by the drive powering off and not coming back online, I quickly realized that I might have screwed up and lost my client's data. But, thanks to DeepSpar, the drive detected and mirrored with some sector damage at the front. But, after three passes, all the data was read, 100%.

Good luck!

[pclab]

Hi Luke

Thanks for the reply.

But all of the "gurus" here, started in another labs. Doesn't anyone started from scratch?
This is like who's born first: the chicken or the egg.

[lcoughey]

I started from scratch. We started outsourcing what we couldn't do. As we could do more, we outsourced less. Now we do most of it in house. The only outsourcing that we would do, right now, is tape drives or some other weird formatted device that we don't see often enough to bother supporting.

But, that being said, it has been a long hard journey to get to where I am now. There is always more to learn and more battles to be fought.

Why not contact Jose at datarecoverylab.pt and see if you can volunteer with him to learn your way around the lab? Instead of competing, you could work together.

[pclab]

I started from scratch. We started outsourcing what we couldn't do. As we could do more, we outsourced less. Now we do most of it in house. The only outsourcing that we would do, right now, is tape drives or some other weird formatted device that we don't see often enough to bother supporting.

But, that being said, it has been a long hard journey to get to where I am now. There is always more to learn and more battles to be fought.

Why not contact Jose at datarecoverylab.pt and see if you can volunteer with him to learn your way around the lab? Instead of competing, you could work together.

By me, I don't have any problem because I want to learn, but if I ask you to tell me your secrets are you available? I don't think so...
I don't think it's a good idea, because in the end, I will stop being a partner to become a concurrent.
So I have to struggle on my own.
If there is anyone available to teach me the basics, here I am.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Luke ,
When Your Expertise In DR Increases ,You never Bother Abount SD Tools ,This Is a Classic case of Me Now ,I Am Saving Money For PC 3000 Portable And Then For PC 3000 UDMA And Then for PC 3000 SCSI

[BlackST]

@pclab, if you really want training and info, it is just matters of how much you are willing to spend. Everything has price tag on it. This kind of training is really highly priced but DO EXIST.

[craig6928]

no problems with us when we had a issue salvation data helped us out right away

same goes with the atola imager tech support is great.

answer with in seconds or a day max

i allso had helped throu closed business hours

salvation data gets bad name but to tell the truth they have been great to us and helped us out a lot.

there product is a cheaper version of what the pc3000 can do and the deepspar unit

but there hd doctor can do the same as the pc3000 can do.

its cheaper product for anyone who wants to get into the data recovery world

we are amazed on how good the data compass is and what it can do and the build is very high standard

the problem is people do not sit down and read the instruction fully

plus tech help is free for live
and updates

[craig6928]

Hi Luke

Thanks for the reply.

But all of the "gurus" here, started in another labs. Doesn't anyone started from scratch?
This is like who's born first: the chicken or the egg.

myself i did all the learning on my own and read lots of books on data recovery
first you need to know how the hard drive works.
then you study on the pcb boards how they work
what does the smooth ic chip does etc
firmware chip does etc
what does the preamp does

service area of the drive does
the g-list and p-list does

everyone on this forum has helped others out
which is nice to know

try and get some hard drives and see why they failed
or try and recover the data yourself

allso you need to invest money if you want to get into the data recovery world.

[pclab]

With my tests in my bad hdd, i have asked some tips and help from the guys in SD. I have 2 tech guys on my MSN, and in the business hours they are available.
They even connected remotely by teamviewer to PC to analyze the problem.

Until now, no problems.

@Craig6928

Thanks for the tips. That's what I need. Something to start.

[quasimodo]

but there hd doctor can do the same as the pc3000 can do.

Are you sure about that

[lcoughey]

but there hd doctor can do the same as the pc3000 can do.

People who make these comments do so because they don't have and have never even seen PC3000 in action. Do you own PC3000 or used it yourself?

I'd be curious to know the number of people who have both PC3000 and SD Data Doctors, which tool they will always use first. My guess is that the majority will say that they don't use the SD tools at all. I know that in my experience, the SD Doctors just collect dust. Perhaps, some day, I'll hire a tech who prefers the SD tools and will make use out of them.

[drc]

people who have both PC3000 and SD Data Doctors, which tool they will always use first. My guess is that the majority will say that they don't use the SD tools at all. I know that in my experience, the SD Doctors just collect dust.

Ditto