All times are UTC - 5 hours [ DST ]




Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 32 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next
Author Message
 Post subject: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: December 12th, 2013, 7:26 
Offline

Joined: March 11th, 2008, 4:35
Posts: 1050
Location: Bangladesh
DFL released new tool for USB HDDs. What do you think about this tool? When weak head can it work good through USB port? What do you think of stability?

Here is the link of their tool

http://www.dolphindatalab.com/dfl-ure-b ... equipment/

_________________
__________
There is no substitute for education and experience
THANK YOU
SHAHI
shahi.mahbub@gmail.com


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: December 12th, 2013, 10:53 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: February 9th, 2009, 16:13
Posts: 2520
Location: Ontario, Canada
How can they say that they are the first to offer USB hard drive recovery tools when PC3000 and DeepSpar have had solutions for quite some time?

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: December 12th, 2013, 23:27 
Offline

Joined: February 15th, 2006, 3:38
Posts: 1079
Location: canada
hit and miss on there product as there no reviews on them at all
it a close shop

so i think new buyers have to sign a confidential agreement before purchase

deepspar did come out first with the solution but at a high cost last time was around $3,500 plus tax etc

it makes you wonder if the version dolphin bringing out will be cheaper and do a lot more
as the deepspar is needed for the usb recovery to work

where the dolphin could be standalone device


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: December 13th, 2013, 9:26 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: December 4th, 2012, 1:35
Posts: 3844
Location: Adelaide, Australia
I guess they can say whatever they like. Just read SD's website.

$3,500 I wouldn't call high, as most DR products, with the exception of SC, are just as high. To be fair, to create tools for DR takes a metric Tonne of research, so if the tools live up to their name, it is worth it. Sadly not always the case.

If it is true what Craig says about no reviews, closed shop, NDA's then it would depend on what the details of that are.

If they give information to customers that they don't want them to share, then an NDA is fine, no problem. If they are trying to silence bad reviews or cover up lacking capabilities, then these days of social media, forums will unstick them soon enough, and I don't think will work out great for them.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: December 13th, 2013, 14:06 
Offline

Joined: March 11th, 2008, 4:35
Posts: 1050
Location: Bangladesh
lcoughey wrote:
How can they say that they are the first to offer USB hard drive recovery tools when PC3000 and DeepSpar have had solutions for quite some time?


They released standalone with price offering at 1999USD.

I'm considering to buy an Imaging device.
DFL-DDP - 3299USD and where DDI4=3350USD

DFL-URE= 1999 and DDI USB Add-on = 1850USD

price is almost similar.

But my question is whenever it is bad sector/weak head, is there any differences between DFL-DDP & DDI4 in capability.

_________________
__________
There is no substitute for education and experience
THANK YOU
SHAHI
shahi.mahbub@gmail.com


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: December 13th, 2013, 15:05 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: February 9th, 2009, 16:13
Posts: 2520
Location: Ontario, Canada
I don't know the differences. If DFL wants to send me a unit, I would be happy to provide a comparison test.

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: December 16th, 2013, 1:40 
Offline

Joined: February 15th, 2006, 3:38
Posts: 1079
Location: canada
HaQue wrote:
I guess they can say whatever they like. Just read SD's website.

$3,500 I wouldn't call high, as most DR products, with the exception of SC, are just as high. To be fair, to create tools for DR takes a metric Tonne of research, so if the tools live up to their name, it is worth it. Sadly not always the case.

If it is true what Craig says about no reviews, closed shop, NDA's then it would depend on what the details of that are.

If they give information to customers that they don't want them to share, then an NDA is fine, no problem. If they are trying to silence bad reviews or cover up lacking capabilities, then these days of social media, forums will unstick them soon enough, and I don't think will work out great for them.




so normal your see reviews of data recovery tools

these products you do not see any reviews at all

its like a marketing video no real test or true reviews.

what i heard and spoken to members who i told will keep everything confidential

they can not really speak out about the products or reviews or issues
only in the main forum

have to bite there lips and keep quiet until its been fixed

no more support or updates for you.

yes the program looks good but to blow away that kind of money would be crazy

in a way it looks like a smaller version of pc-3000

i read the full manuel on this product

here another example why you wont see manuels for both products

the PC-3000 for Windows UDMA: instruction manuel you wont see on the net as this is coded to each users


reason why someone posted the new service manual for the pc3000 uploaded up diffrent account
but ace data pin point who that user was who uploaded it right after they downloaded it.


it would be good to see real reviews from independable people

who would point out the flaws in the hardware and software to be fixed.

but suprise suprise you dont see this at all on these two tools


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: December 16th, 2013, 10:13 
Offline

Joined: December 8th, 2010, 11:37
Posts: 738
Location: Ottawa, Canada
I recently upgraded my DFL-DE to a DFL-DDP and am very happy with the unit. I also upgraded my DFL-WDII and DFL-STII to their new DFL-FRP, which combined the two and allows for addition of future capabilities, e.g., repair of other make drives. As a beginner at DR, I am unqualified to offer a review of the products I own. I barely know what I'm doing when it comes to firmware repair, let alone capable of comparing the products and features to those of other tools I've never owned or used. I will say this, I have been very happy with the manuals and tutorial videos available to those who have purchased the tools, and the support provided by Dolphin Data Lab. Just a couple of days ago, I spent 3 hrs (11:00 PM to 2:00 AM EST!) in a remote support session with them to resolve why I was unable to install the DDP drivers. (It turned out to be my incompatible PCIe USB 3.0 host adapter--the one they provided with the unit works flawlessly). Because I'm also running a small business repairing computers, I'm very busy and find it challenging to find the dedicated time to learn to use the firmware repair tool (DFL-FRP), but the DDP, and the DFL-DE before it, was immediately productive and very capable.

Once you own one of their data recovery tools, you can participate in their users' forum and have access to everything there. As far as providing access to non-owners of their tools, it's no different than ACE's policy. DDL at least allows one to transfer the license to their tools when the time comes to sell them. There are a couple of DR pros/engineers who own DDL tools and recently provided extensive, detailed feedback in the DDL forum regarding design issues and how the products can be improved. They (DDL) welcome such feedback and appear to act upon it, continuously and promptly improving and enhancing the products. I find their tools excellent value for the cost and am very pleased to have bought them.

_________________
Sabo Computer Repairs & Data Recovery


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: December 16th, 2013, 12:53 
Offline

Joined: December 8th, 2010, 11:37
Posts: 738
Location: Ottawa, Canada
I forgot to mention that on a couple of occasions, I've had drives that the Atola Bandura would not detect or whose diagnostics said the PCB test failed and I was unable to clone the drives. In both cases, I was able to recover the data -- with the DFL-DE in one case and the DDFL-DDP in the other. Yeah, it's anecdotal, but that's all I've got to offer as a comparison. Finally, you may be able to gain some insight into the DDL tools from their YouTube videos. It's unfortunate that those and their tutorial videos use a PC running the Chinese-language version or Windows, as it gives the false impression that the tools will preset the user with Chinese language choices/annotations/tabs etc., and that has never been the case for me.

_________________
Sabo Computer Repairs & Data Recovery


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: December 16th, 2013, 20:59 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: December 4th, 2012, 1:35
Posts: 3844
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Thaks Larry, good to know real-world anecdotes.

I see no reason why a company should provide a user manual to someone that does not own the product. The purpose of the manual is not to review a product, nor should it be used as a negative that they don't provide it for non-owners.

There should however be ways of comparing products BEFORE you buy, with valid data, to be able to make a choice. It shouldn't be a case of finding out strengths and weaknesses after purchase, such as I did with Salvation Flash Doctor.

If you make a tool, and you are too scared for people to openly discuss exactly what it does and doesn't do, then that is a large black flag..


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: January 7th, 2014, 13:00 
Offline

Joined: March 24th, 2011, 0:18
Posts: 180
Location: Australia
I went through several tools in the last 3 years and can offer my short comparison.
To begin with, I had the complete SD tools and i must say i would have delete this experience from my past :-) total waste of time and money.
I have been buying and using DFL tools since they started and i love these guys, the products are still a bit raw and luck of proper stability to my opinion but they are working very hard to improve it and listening to customers in regards to bug fixes and addition of new functions. they are improving all the time and the key here is that they are listening to their customers and sharing the info inside their forum and they will always help you out when you need their support, i would highly recommend them, there is nothing similar to SD here like most people are afraid from past experience.
I have also DDIv3 for 3 years and this is my favorite imager from all of them.
And 7 months ago i bought the PC3K Express and PC3K Flash.
As a product i can say that there is nothing like the PC3K + DE as it is a complete suite that offers support for all type of drives and the both the FW utilities and DE have many many functions that i am still learning.
The PC3K + DE is the most stable product and sits on one PCiE without all the hassle of many external boxes.
Problem with ACE is the delay in the support and the cost of product and support.
In regards to DFL they still don't offer a complete suite for all brands but already covers WD and SEAGATE and the DE and DDP and now the URE which i still don't have and wait for some feedback.
I must say that in many cases i prefer to work with the DFL over the PC3K in FW mainly with WDII.
From my experience with the DFL products which i own:
1. WDII - to my opinion their best tool and very powerful in general.
2. STII - bought it about a month ago but didn't try it yet - looks ok but still raw.
3. DE - i had it for 6 months and i replaced it 6 months ago - to my opinion was very raw and unstable at the time so didn't use it much.
4. DDP - replaced my DE with it - it use to be unstable but since i bought it they released 4 versions which made it a good tool with many functions and much more stable - in general it is a good tool but to my opinion imaging ability is still not as good as DDI and PC3K DE. but DDP has many functions that the DDI don't and good user interface. in general it is a decent imager and functions around are not a must by nice to have.
5. URE - usb imaging new tool - don't have it yet but wait to here some feedback.
6. Support and Human interaction - brilliant - the best support on the industry no doubt.
i had the products since July 2012 and i was always impressed with the quick assistance and responsiveness. Especially from Mr. Stanley Morgan, he is a sweet helpful guy that always try to help.
Although in the last 2 months they grew very fast with many new users and i felt that support quality is decreasing slightly so i guess their real challenge is to stay with the same level of support with many users and not as a small company, if the'll manage to do so they'll have a big edge over the competition.

Hope that helps


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: DFL-URE: Discovery of Design
PostPosted: January 22nd, 2014, 14:46 
Offline

Joined: January 22nd, 2014, 14:30
Posts: 3
Location: China
I see a lot of guys waiting for someone to post a feedback on DFL-URE… I’ve bought one right as it came out and I thought I share my thoughts with you.

See picture of DFL-URE board attached. Looks like entire PCB assembly was done by hand… very dirty work. Didn’t even bother to clean remainders of soldering flux. This is for $2k…

As you can see, labels on all chips were wiped off. However, as soon as you connect the tool to Windows, it is identified as VID_2109&PID_2812 (USB 3.0 Hub built on VIA Labs VL812 chip) and Windows loads a standard hub driver for it. So, the main chip of the board really doesn’t have anything custom on it and it’s just a regular USB 3.0 Hub with a standard hub driver.

Browsing further Windows Device Manager you can see how four ports of the hub are used. Two of these ports go straight to two source drive USB connectors. Third port is connected to an onboard USB Serial adapter built on FTDI FT232 UART chip (VID_0403 & PID_6001) and Windows load a standard FTDI driver for it. And the fourth port used by an onboard power control module that is built on an unknown USB chip; Windows don’t recognize its VID/PID and so the user have to manually install a DFL driver for it so that DFL-URE application could power ON/OFF drives via this driver.

Well, not much on the hardware level… All basic stuff worth around $50 in total.

Now about their software. Well, unfortunately, the discovery (again, simply based on Windows Device Manager) was that any USB drive connected to DFL-URE is mounted by Windows with standard USB Mass Storage Device driver…L!!! This means that DFL-URE cannot work with the drives that are not identify by Windows… So all the USB drives not identified by Windows due to bad sectors or firmware issue can not be handled by this tool.

They seem to try to mitigate fact that the tool using standard USB Mass Storage Device driver by intercepting Windows communication to drive and modifying drive ID, so that the drive was showed up in Device Manager as “DFL-URE USBDrive V1.0 USB Device”, but you still can see that Windows simply is using a standard USB Mass Storage Device driver for this drive, e.g. under “Device Manager -> Universal Serial Bus Controllers -> USB Mass Storage Device”.

Also, I am not very sure why they implemented all those firmware repair features in this tool (if it uses standard OS drivers), because pretty much all drives with firmware related problems will not mount on Windows. DFL don’t even trying to hide this fact though and their installation guide says that for drives that have Windows “detection problems” … “users need to change to SATA board” to fix firmware and then put the USB board back to the drive to image it with DFL-URE. Well…???

Yeah, you can still make some firmware repair on some drives over serial terminal, but the use of this is limited and this is also can be done by other non-USB recovery tools.

Anyway, to summarize, from design perspective, DFL-URE is the Windows data recovery software imaging utility that comes with a USB3 hub hardware that can also automatically control power to drive. It could be a good software imaging tool… I don’t know yet, because we didn’t have a chance yet to try many USB drives with problems on it. But, what I want to say is that this product cannot be recognized as “USB Device Recovery Equipment”, as it is declare by DFL. So, personally, I will not value this tool for $2k.


Attachments:
DFL.JPG
DFL.JPG [ 148.56 KiB | Viewed 40295 times ]
Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: January 23rd, 2014, 1:54 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: September 8th, 2009, 18:21
Posts: 15461
Location: Australia
locker44 wrote:
And the fourth port used by an onboard power control module that is built on an unknown USB chip; Windows don’t recognize its VID/PID and so the user have to manually install a DFL driver for it so that DFL-URE application could power ON/OFF drives via this driver.

Are you referring to the 7-pin IC to the right of the coil and above the 12V input socket? To me it looks like a switchmode regulator, not a "USB chip". AISI, the coil, IC, and 220uF 10V capacitor constitute a 5V supply. I can't see any chip that looks like it might be involved in power switching. Is there another chip hidden amongst the taller capacitors, or on the underside of the PCB?

Can you measure the resistance between the 12VDCin socket and the two 12VDCout sockets? If the resistance is zero, then this would suggest that the 12V supply is not switched. Could you also measure the resistance between the coil and the 5V pins at the two USB output connectors? Once again this will determine whether the +5V supply is switched.

When you say that "Windows don’t recognize its VID/PID", do you mean that this "USB chip" identifies itself with an unknown VID/PID, or do you mean that this chip doesn't report any VID/PID at all?

BTW, thank you very much for your report, and for the photograph.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: January 23rd, 2014, 6:11 
Offline

Joined: September 8th, 2008, 3:11
Posts: 34
Hello locker44, we were planning to get the dfl-ure from dolphin data lab and if you can create the same at much lower price, will definitely get one from you. btw, how it's possible you are allowed to open their hardware and show it to the public?

_________________
Train yourself before you step into DR


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: January 23rd, 2014, 10:27 
Offline

Joined: January 22nd, 2014, 14:30
Posts: 3
Location: China
fzabkar wrote:
I can't see any chip that looks like it might be involved in power switching. Is there another chip hidden amongst the taller capacitors, or on the underside of the PCB?

Switching transistors underside of PCB.

fzabkar wrote:
When you say that "Windows don’t recognize its VID/PID", do you mean that this "USB chip" identifies itself with an unknown VID/PID, or do you mean that this chip doesn't report any VID/PID at all?

Chip report some VID/PID, but this VID look not registered. I searched in Internet and nothing… I don’t have this VID/PID numbers with me now, because I am not in work already.

skyunlimited wrote:
Hello locker44, we were planning to get the dfl-ure from dolphin data lab and if you can create the same at much lower price, will definitely get one from you.

Where I say I want build these units. But, you can build something yourself if you want…

skyunlimited wrote:
btw, how it's possible you are allowed to open their hardware and show it to the public?

Why not allowed? Look Internet… many many reviews like this from large very good companies and magazines. They open the box and show what’s inside. Why its bad? Its only good… it help people know product better…

Anyone want posting whats inside other data recovery boxes? This could help many people to understand whats this about…


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: January 23rd, 2014, 17:01 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: September 8th, 2009, 18:21
Posts: 15461
Location: Australia
skyunlimited wrote:
how it's possible you are allowed to open their hardware and show it to the public?

Huh?

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: January 23rd, 2014, 17:08 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: September 8th, 2009, 18:21
Posts: 15461
Location: Australia
locker44 wrote:
Anyone want posting whats inside other data recovery boxes? This could help many people to understand whats this about…

Yes please. :-)))))

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: January 23rd, 2014, 23:03 
Offline

Joined: May 27th, 2008, 1:15
Posts: 94
i opened my ddi once :D


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: January 25th, 2014, 5:00 
Online
User avatar

Joined: January 9th, 2007, 11:12
Posts: 390
Location: Romania
DrFaustus wrote:
i opened my ddi once :D


I opened and repaired mine also.... :D

_________________
www.datasave.ro


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: USB Recovery Express
PostPosted: January 26th, 2014, 11:10 
Offline

Joined: February 28th, 2011, 21:04
Posts: 207
Location: United Kingdom
Does anyone have hands on experience with this tool then? How does it compare to DDI 4 with USB add on in terms of functionality?


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 32 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

All times are UTC - 5 hours [ DST ]


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 6 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group