Gillware burnish/glide machine

[cgallery]

Saw this at Gillware's website:

http://gillwaredatarecovery.wistia.com/ ... qfz8xr96jf

Can anyone tell me about this contraption?

I have a feeling its true value in data recovery is about nil, but would like to hear from people more expert.

Haven't been around in a while, time for me to go start reading some threads.

[HaQue]

never heard of it, thanks for sharing

[data-medics]

I think I figured out where he got it from... hehehe. When I get confirmation I'll post the name of the company in my forum.

[jermy]

i don't know how much is the cost of this machine, but by watching the video i would say: even if you pay me i don't take it"

IMHO it's nothing more than a software designed to randomly draw some lines on the screen (i don't know why the entire machine is needed, can be done on mspaint, (for more sophisticated, you can use photoshop ))

and the reason for that is: see for yourself

before

after

so...

like i said can be done with MSpaint or photoshop, no need to spend so much money on the machine

[Doomer]

It's probably a buffing machine for lubricant deposition. I very much doubt that it could be used (effectively) for cleaning.

[HaQue]

I don't know.. I tend to hold back judgement. If all the guy says is true, and I se no reason to not believe this hole video and content is not true, then it could possibly stop heads from getting killed as soon as they are replaced on platter damaged drives. He mentioned he got it from a manufacturer. A few months ago there were auctions from hard disk companies selling unwanted tools.

That said, many people on here I consider top notch DR people seem to get by without it, and on pretty bad drives, so weather or not you really need it is another thing. I am guessing this thing was not cheap, and possibly needs consumables (lubrication/cleaning solution) that also isn't cheap. How many extra drives would you need to do a year to pay for it, or how much would you need to inflate your price to pay for it?

[fzabkar]

Perhaps you wouldn't need to buy the machine.

It's not the same thing, but I once had to engage the services of a precision machine shop in Singapore to micropolish the surface of an electromagnetic head for a Xynetics plotter. This head flew on an air bearing that was created by pumping air into the head gap via an umbilical cord attached to an oil-less air compressor. I don't recall paying an exorbitant price for this job. It might be worth investigating whether anyone offers a "burnish/glide" service.

[HaQue]

True, you will be very surprised what services you find if you actually get out there and do a good search. things like getting Monoliths X-Rayed, Plastic tools made, machining, laser cutting etc are not always out of reach of the little guy.

[data-medics]

I actually tend to believe Scott on this one. I've watched quite a few of his videos, the guy knows his stuff and doesn't tend to peddle fluff. Though I'd bet a tool like this only really helps in a small percentage of cases, so not something that we all need or should bother to invest in.

Anyway, I managed to track down the company that makes this tool.

[jermy]

Anyway, I managed to track down the company that makes this tool.

how much ?

[data-medics]

Didn't find that out yet. But you can find out the name of the company on my forum: http://www.data-medics.com/forum/viewto ... ?f=8&t=708

[thatdellguy]

http://www.mratek.com/MRA/Products.html

[fzabkar]

http://www.mratek.com/MRA/Products.html

Certification uses a quad-read channel capable of testing media requiring write frequencies of up to 100 MHz.

Doesn't this mean that the machine is only good for testing 10MB/s platters ??? Wouldn't one expect test frequencies of the order of 2 - 3 GHz?

[bigpapi]

It's real equipment and real useful for a small amount of difficult cases. I've met Scott at an IDEMA tradeshow 6 years ago, dude isn't a bullshitter, struck me as very nice young man. I also happen to know they aren't the only lab in the US to use one and they are all over the HDD industry. MRA sells these things to the industry for burnishing and verifying platters are clean during production.

Anyone that has worked on a modern 3TB seagate with bad heads and no visible platter damage... changed those heads and read 1% of the data before those heads hit an invisible scratch and are killed would understand the value of burnishing. Burnishing equipment is useful in many industries and the equipment is expensive.

[Doomer]

Anyone that has worked on a modern 3TB seagate with bad heads and no visible platter damage... changed those heads and read 1% of the data before those heads hit an invisible scratch and are killed would understand the value of burnishing.

True, but disassembling each drive and polishing the surfaces would be very time consuming and expensive. Clients are generally not ready for that.

[scottholewinski]

Hi Everyone - My name is Scott Holewinski, the guy in the glide/burnish video we produced and distributed last week. When I noticed the topic was trending on a couple forums I thought I'd join the conversation and maybe provide a little insight. The glide/burnishing tool I show is real and a very useful part of our operation. It is by no means required on every data recovery case our engineers perform, but in certain situations like the ones some other forum members describe, there can be embedded particulates in the magnetic media that can very quickly kill replacement read/write heads. This is particularly true on many of the high-capacity drives we regularly see. Using a burnishing head specially designed for our application and placed into the fixture we are able to remove these embedded particulates in a very controlled manner and thus avoid any additional damage to the media surface or the replacement read/write heads. The glide function of the device allows us to measure how well the burnishing process is doing and whether or not more burnishing passes are required. The glide/burnishing fixture itself was not designed specifically for Gillware although we did need to do some retrofitting to get it to work for our particular application. Except for the couple devices sold to recovery labs like Gillware, 99.99% of glide/burnishing fixtures sold are sent to media manufacturers themselves. The fixture is unfortunately expensive, extremely hard to transport and install, requires a fair amount of training to use, and has some pretty specific facilities and maintenance requirements to keep it running. That being said, for Gillware it allows us to squeeze a couple extra percent out of our overall success rates and that more that justifies the upfront investment and ongoing maintenance costs. Hope this information is helpful to the forum and if anyone has more questions I'm more than happy to answer them.

[Doomer]

Scott, a question for you.
On the video at 1:03, going forward, you were saying that during a head crash some debris (I assume that debris would be pieces of media and sliders) would be embedded in the platters and that before you do a data recovery you would need to clean that debris up and the tool you showed allows you to do that.
Could you please explain your understanding of physics of the cleaning process.

I'm skeptical on the "cleaning" part of the process considering that relatively hard particles of debris would be actually removed at 25000 rpm, rather then act like a sandpaper, creating more damage. Isn't it actually the debris between a platter and a slider cause growing damage on the first place?

[scottholewinski]

Hi Doomer - all modern hard drives are coated with a very hard DLC coating that is intended to protect the platter surface against incidental head crashes. The coating is not impenetrable however and in severe head crashes the coating is damaged. On a microscopic level the damaged DLC debris takes the shape of very hard cones. These cones are what can embed themselves in the platter surface and cause damage very quickly to new heads. Unfortunately the inertial forces caused by spinning the platter is not enough to rid the media of these embedded particles. A mechanical cleaning process is needed and this is what the burnishing fixture does. As I mentioned in my last post the specific kind of burnishing head we use is not standard and has special geometry designed for our particular application and is made from more robust materials. The burnishing heads used by the manufacturers would never be able to withstand the abuse that we put them through in our application.

[4sight]

LMAO .. .

This is so sad that I'm not sure if we should be laughing or crying for the customer drives and data being exposed to this risky process, so for now I'll just shake my head and give my humble 2 cent based on 17 years of experience of having worked at 3 big data recovery companies both in Canada and the US (Ontrack & ActionFront, etc..).

1. This "burnishing" process is nothing more than a "BUFFING" of the platter surface (more on this later)
2. This process introduces VERY HIGH & UNNECESSARY RISK to platter tracks which are more likely to cause EXTENSIVE surface and track damages for modern drives.
3. Unless these are using this on 1995 or older (200MB single platter sized) drives this is WORTHLESS for most modern drives.
4. MRACK makes the tool for the testing and buffing of things like CDs, and optical disks plastics.. and other "pre-tracked" low density recording devices.

Now I understand that companies like gillware need to keep pushing fake research miracle tool stories as part of their consume marketing scheme, but save your customers data, time and money and don't expose any magnetic based track / platters through this kind of abuse.

The BEST and "safest" way to clean and remove debris from disk platters is to use sterilized and highly targeted high pressured air or non-oxidizing liquids.

It's ok for these guys peddle this falsehood to clueless customers, but as a technician simply ask yourself the following questions:

1. If the hard drive manufacturers take all possible effort to avoid surface contact with tracks why in the world would you want touch and "BUFF" the tracks?
2. What happens to the pre-existing debris? Wouldn't most of them cause further track damage during the buffing process?
3. Just because the surface is "smooth" does it mean that the tacks are in tact?

You would expect to see stuff like this being done at $99 data recovery computer shops.

[scottholewinski]

4sight - the burnishing process we use at Gillware, and the one used by manufacturers, does NOT involve actual contact with the platter surface. In order to accomplish that the fixture requires frequent re-calibration which is why I mentioned in my first post that the tool requires fairly extensive maintenance. The burnishing head floats just above the platter surface, much like a real read/write head, and picks up the debris that protrudes up beyond the normal surface of the media. And I don't disagree that this process is riskier than high pressure gas (something we of course use here at Gillware), but for embedded particulates the burnishing process is one that has provided the best results for us. Since you have extensive experience in the data recovery industry you should know that data recovery techniques changes just as fast as hard drive technology does. Bottom-line is that the techniques that work on a 4200RPM Toshiba laptop drive don't necessarily translate to a modern high-capacity 6TB drive. Gillware is not the only lab that is employing this technique in the U.S., and their are at least a handful of labs in Europe and Japan also starting to test the glide/burnish waters. That's all I really have to say about the technique. It works for us. That's really all that matters.

As for why I made the video...it was really more informational than marketing. Mainly distributed to our partner base and other technical folks in our field to show people what is possible. I spend a lot of my time trying to move our industry forward. Sometimes this involves producing a video like this one, sometimes it involves working with other recovery labs and storage trade organizations regarding issues such as SED SSD data recovery enablement. I honestly don't think the average consumer would watch more than the first 10 seconds of this boring video, so I certainly didn't produce it because my marketing team thought it would generate a bunch of business. Everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinions and to develop their own techniques. This one has been very successful for us at Gillware. I'll let people continue to slice and dice my post and comments, but this will be my last public comment on the thread. Negativity brings me down. If anyone has questions about the process feel free to PM me.