@vulcan

Thanks for your reply. I think it helps to understand your viewpoint. I would like reflect only the last paragraph. So, you may find fine detailed records of five years of my research activity at the website of my workplace in form of technical reports, but I don't think that I'm exceptional in sense of altruism. In research it is common that people share their results more or less honestly. Even researchers at for-profit organizations like Microsoft Research publish on their results.

Second, I think if your work for six months and you try to document your findings as precise as possible, you won't be able to share more than 25% to 33% of your knowledge. According to my understanding the knowledge can be divided into information and skills. In case of skills you can't make a shortcut and even to understand information you need some effort. So, that's why I can see the point of keeping trade secrets in long-term.

I'm curious about your opinion on my remarks.

I answered your other points too, so I would not agree to artificially restrict discussion to only some points, if the discussion was continuing - but this is not now important.


I did not say that publishing research was altruism - my example was that if you publish information which took 6 months of your life to gather, where that publishing directly increases your commercial competition (because your competitors can read it), and which therefore affects your ability to put food on your (and your family's) table, that is altruistic.

If you are a researcher (as I think you are saying), and so are being paid to perform and publish research, than IMHO that is very different from the situation of a DR company. Such a company is in direct competition with other DR companies, and the ability to differentiate their service offerings (e.g. to create new abilities which result from research, and which become trade secrets), has a direct effect on their commercial success.

Therefore while it might be an interesting intellectual discussion, I politely decline to continue, as my time is limited. I addressed your previous points with my views, having done research leading to both patented and trade-secret uses; you have different views from your different experiences. That's fine, we can agree to disagree.

..+1....Like this......

Good post, Janos. I'll link to it from my page.

Don

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Don Anderson
Certified Data Recovery Engineer
Tri-State Data Recovery & Forensics, LLC
www.PhiladelphiaDriveRecovery.com

I agree with the content listed. I think something that might apply here is over the head of many who want to even attempt DIY. Aside from my full time data recovery business, I do piano tuning and rebuilding. One of my teachers long ago said the following: What you do know, in the wrong context will hurt you. That said, there does seem to be a psychological attitude with folks and data recovery. Just like many service industries, cost dictates outcomes. Example, in Green Bay, WI where I live there is a person who advertises "Lowest Rates in Town" and "All invoices negotiable." The mentality created is, 'everything technology should be cheap and reasonable.' When a hard drive fails, the expectation is: a) "it's your fault that you did this to it [ because it could never happen on its own ] and b) I paid you $29.95 for an hour of service, it should be the same for my data.

Jason Davies, President
TechRx Inc.
Green Bay, WI

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Jason Davies, TechRx Inc.
techrxgb.com
920.884.1195

There are simply too many variables, sometimes down to the case level, for any one viewpoint to be the "right" one. For each point in the discussion, each "side" can probably come up with a valid argument on it.

The absolute biggest issue on this whole topic, in my opinion, is that people do not step back, take a look at the other persons situation and try to understand why they did what they did, or said what they said.

If you have a hacker playing around with drives, you should expect they will probably blog about it and write up tutorials, share info etc.. It is what they do..

If you have a 20 year veteran of DR you can expect they have seen many DIY failures and wince each time.

You can also expect different circumstances for people that outsource cleanroom jobs, live in different parts of the world, have different quantities of jobs, do other work and DR is a subset, have different staff levels, different budgets, different levels of "noobness", different motivations(money,fame, fun) etc etc etc..

Anyone trying to make a point gained by citing an individual circumstance or case or trying to group all people involved in DR as "DR pros" or even DIYers... will get counter examples from here to next week.

Not to mention individuals that change with time as well. start hacking drives, have fun, do some courses, make some money, buy some tools, employ some staff, etc.. that may change someone from a "Spildit" to an "Einstein9" - no disrespect to either one, just examples of different characters and motivations.

A mixture of all types is what makes forums like this work. If we all said "hmm yes I agree" it would get boring. Fast.

As for making the technical info more public making things better.... I doubt that very much. 95% of DIY recoveries I see here either made recovery impossible, or tripled the end cost to have it professionally handled.

It's the same reason that surgeons don't generally release how to guides to operate on yourself. While some may legitimately want to try it, that information is likely to cause a lot more harm to the world than do any good.

A little knowledge poorly applied is a dangerous thing. It gives people confidence they shouldn't have.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

So .... what to do when a PRO asks for info ? Or hot to judge the level of knowledge of a so called "Pro" ?

If you were a person outside of the data recovery world having issues with an hard drive what type of advice would you follow ?

This sort of advice where a regular user manages to fix a WD slow issue without any PC3000 sort of tools just by following D.I.Y. procedures :

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29187

Or this sort of advice provided by a PRO ?

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=28686

The question to be asked is more like .... what is a data recovery pro and what is not, and what level of information is safe to share and use.

It's not wrong to share as long as the user can evaluate the importance of the data they have and they do know where to stop. As long as it's inside a reasonable margin, and even if it's not .... i think that sharing the information can only be a problem to people relying on the secrets to make money.

Just because everyone can browse google and figure out how to build a computer from scratch, people still go to stores and buy computer. You can browse about canalization, or electricity and learn, yet people will still hire electricians to do their work.
Just because information about data recovery exists it doesn't mean that people will stop hiring data recovery professionals ...

And at the end, if it's not for sharing information what is the objective of this sort of data recovery forums then ? To promote oneself ?

Best regards.

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The HDD Oracle - Platform for OPEN research on Data Recovery.

It's called the Dunning-Kruger Effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%5FKruger_effect

Your observation applies equally to self-proclaimed data recovery professionals. Would you entrust your precious data to a DR pro who couldn't tell the difference between a Seagate and a Samsung drive, even when it was hooked up to his own PC$10K?

I could just as easily write a book on all the stuff-ups that I've seen by "pros" in this forum and others over the past 5 years. No doubt there are even more examples in the archives. What's more, people would be astounded at the sorts of basic questions that I receive via PM.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

You missed the, "Why not run SpinRite, HDD Regenerator and other tools that destroy your hard drive?"

This sounds stupid and is not true at least for me.
Most of the cases - over 90% trying these or similar programmes helps
reading data on other backup devices. Yes you have some lost pictures or files
but that's all. Sometimes disk is not readable and you can not start that procedure.
So there you come the pro which have special rooms,devices etc. where your disk
is split appart. Each plate is put on a special device which costs over 1 million then
read, after that all information from all plates is combined and you have the data.
Then you are charged $4000.
All depends how much valuable is the information in your broken hard.
But saying - You missed the, "Why not run SpinRite, HDD Regenerator and other tools that destroy your hard drive?" is just stupid. Same as saying not to drive bicycle without head protector because you may fall and broke your head. You know the risk and if you like you can take it.

According to the user, he just "quickly opened the cover to have a look and shut it right away" and did nothing to it...

Hmmm!!...

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

So the fingerprints are yours?

You really shouldn't be running those software programs against DAMAGED drives or drives that you need to recover data from.

There is no problem is running SpinRite on a NEW drive to stress test it and make sure it doesn't have defects and all sectors can be read and written to. This is not true for a damaged drive that still reads data but is almost gone. You should CLONE the drive with ddrescue (or better yet an hardware imaging tool).

If you run SpinRite against a drive that is almost gone then the drive will die on you with all the data inside of it. Also if it re-locate sectors and the G-List gets full you might loose access to all the data as well. If heads die they can also damage the platter, etc ...

I've seen many cases of drives that required a head swap because someone used SpinRite on them.

If they were to clone the drives first then at least they would had retrieved some data.

Read here : - http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php? ... 1402#p7203

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The HDD Oracle - Platform for OPEN research on Data Recovery.

After watching youtube videos, DR is not really that hard. You just need the expensive tools and a few weeks of training. It's not like computer programming where you need 4 years of college.

- Why not perform a platter exchange @ home for DIY?
People in the industry uses scotch tape and cheap 3D printed head tools and they work just fine.

Oh dear, another “know-it-all”

I presume this is a joke?

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New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Scott Moulton will make you a data recovery expert in just 5 days. :lol:

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Charges $3500 for it. I'll pass.

@digicube, if I were venturing into data recovery, I would start with free tools and a selection of inexpensive commercial tools, eg SeDiv (all HDD manufacturers, US$350), WDMarvel (US$100 ?) and SHTR (Samsung, US$100).

You'll find a lot of info at http://www.hddoracle.com.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

@fzabkar, thanks for the tip. Too bad, Udemy has no courses on data recovery. Must be filled with trade secrets.

Some time ago I stumbled upon this course. At that time all the course material was available for download.

CIS 294 - Advanced Data Recovery and Clean Room Operations:
http://catalog.edcc.edu/preview_course_nopop.php?catoid=7&coid=27918

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A backup a day keeps DR away.