One should still be able to survive in the data recovery field without PC-3000 ....
If one is starting on the filed one can buy cheaper tools and "upgrade" later to PC-3000.
If one is an "expert" in the data rcovery field to the point of fully understanding how HDD and Firmware works for the majority of drives and if one can code their own tools then one shouldn't need PC-3000 !!!

I think that there should be very clever people out there doing DR at professional level and researching new sollutions without the need of using PC-3000. Those will be very rare cases, let's say just a bunch of people.
Majority of people posting on the forum will be people still learning DR that either don't have $$$ to invest on PC-3000 or people that are already running a DR business and have PC-3000 as main tool ....
Just because PC-3000 is very powerfull and the "standard" in data recovery firmware tools that doesn't mean that a bunch of guys reading this forum (and never posting) can't create their own sollutions that can fix "problems" that PC-3000 can't fix.
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