lcoughey wrote:
I think this
article by Roman of Ace Labs will help shed some light on what is likely the root issue here.
So, when Ontrack is making their diagnosis about a "dead controller", what they are really saying is that the controller is stuck in a BSY state that cannot be bypassed through techno mode, thanks to Sandforce's extra layer of encryption. Most labs openly admit that they have no solution or work around for such cases, yet the larger labs with huge sales teams have sales reps who are trained to always say that they can recover from any situation, either hoping that they get lucky with an easy case or unaware that they don't actually have any in-house abilities to solve such cases.
I recently discovered a method which allowed me to work around the BSY issue on some SandForce based SSDs. When I went back through a bin of unrecoverable SandForce SSDs that clients left with us for R&D when they declined the prices of the labs who claim to do more, I was able to recover several of them, two of which were PNY (240GB and 480GB).
That said, in most cases where the Sandforce controller gets stuck in a BSY state, there is no alternative than to use a service who actually has real in-house methods to recover the data. Of the 4 labs here in North America who claim that they have special methods to recover SandForce SSDs, the only lab that was actually able to produce results in my test cases is ACE. I've heard from others that Northwind is equally as good and perhaps more affordable.
The next time I get a case that I cannot recover and the client is able/willing to pay the higher rate (which is justified by the complexity of what is needed to be done), I hope to send it off to Northwind.
Thanks Luke.
We'll do our best to not let you down.
I have to agree, some of the big guys have sale reps that will tell you anything just to get you to send in jobs. Most of them don't even know what "Controller" means, let alone what SF means.
Also, I have a feeling that indeed, when Ontrack says "dead controller" they could mean that it's just glitching to BSY.
retrogamer wrote:
northwind,
if i sent you pics of the board could you tell me if data is recoverable?
what would your price quote be? i only need one text file
thanks
Unfortunately I can't say anything by looking at pictures. We need to evaluate the drive, thus we need to have the drive in our hands in order to tell you more.
Also unfortunately, in order to recover even one single file off the drive we need to solve the issue with the drive, so the price remains the same.
And as arvika said, it's not cheap.