What's in your tool kit?

I'm a 20 year Information Security veteran, new to this forum and data recovery. We are considering offering data recovery to our offering and require assistance outfitting our shop with hardware and software, training and a clean room.

I respectfully request that vendors not reply, as I wish the recommendations to come from seasoned professionals, without the potential of personal gain.

So, what should I put on my grocery list so I can go shopping?

Thanks!

I would say that there is no use in having tools if you don't have the knowledge and skill which enable you to use them effectively. Giving a man on the street a scalpel doesn't make him a surgeon, I once heard.

I am relatively new to DR (not even a year) and I started off with Google and reading lots and lots of forum posts. Then I got a multimeter. Then a heat gun. Then ddrescue. Then a contact for replacement PCBs. Then more and more and more knowledge and practice, practice with PCB replacements, head swaps, etc. Then I got PC3K. A lot more learning there. I've just received, today, HDDSurgery head swap tools. More learning.

Even if you've been doing it 20 years you will still learn something new everyday.

I don't have a clean room, I have a HEPA filtered laminar flow bench and it works just fine. Your shopping list is up to how much you want to spend, how serious and professional you want to become, how much you already know and are willing to learn, etc etc.

I have been in IT my entire professional life and had to learn about HDD technology and repair from step 1. I recently got an honours degree in digital forensics, yet I can't say it helped with DR one bit, so I don't think your 20 years in IT security will help too much unfortunately, you'll have to start from step 1 if you are serious about it. Otherwise you could outsource your DR to a dedicated lab.

That's my 5 cents.

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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
Data Recovery Cape Town

My suggestion:
PC3000 + Data Extractor for general diagnostics and FW work , Deepspar disk imager ( DDI ) or Atola Insight as imagers , hot air rework station ( or infrared ), laminar flow bench for internal works ( if u have money - clean room )
PC3000Flash if u are planing to work with nands ( or Soft Center hardware, i hear its cheaper )
As for head combs and the such - i heard HDDsurgery has good equipment but i dont use them.
Good luck.

PS Deepspar offers training courses about 2 times a year. A very good starting point for your techs if you are serious about starting DR.
Gl.

Not only the tools are what you need.
A lot of reading and researching. This is no easy picnic....

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http://www.pclab.com.pt facebook.com/PCLAB.A.T
ACELab partner

Thanks for all of your suggestions so far. Please keep them coming! I'll continue to source the items as I receive your suggestions. Your kind assistance will allow me to come up with the initial capital investment figures to plug into the business plan.

Charlie

I'd recommend you to start with "soft data recovery" - that is, data recovery when there are only problems with the data itself rather than hardware problems with the hard disk. As your experience and knowledge grow, you may add some hardware-related issues to the kit. Btw, you may find some data recovery pro nearby and relay "hard" cases to it for some percents.

For the "soft" cases, I recommend you our R-Studio as a complete solution for that data recovery cases. In addition to a data recovery utility, it has a RAID reconstruction module, disk cloner/imager, Hex/text editor, etc. You may read more about it in our article: File Recovery Software. Why R-Studio?

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R-Studio Data Recovery Software