Best Practices for Service Centers (White Paper)

[jono-ats]

We are seeing a lot of drives lately that people have attempted to recover. Often we are able to recover the data, but sometimes we can't, because of a prior attempt.

It's OK if someone wants to experiment with their own data and are willing to accept a bad outcome, but it is often sad when it involves a customer's or another person's drive, who may not have fully understood the attendant risks.

Having run a computer service center prior to going into the data recovery field, I thought it might be helpful -- for ALL concerned -- to attempt to catalog a set of best practices, in order to minimize the chances of failure for those who are going to attempt recovery.

It's a 16 page document with photo illustrations, about 3 MB in size. It might be optimistic to expect folks to read it, but if it saves one person's data, or makes a service center better at what they do, I think it will have been worth the time and effort.

http://www.datasaversllc.com/wp-content ... -Final.pdf

Thank you for your consideration.

Jon Yaeger
Data Savers, LLC

[jerovsek]

Hello jono-ats,


great job.

Thank you and all the best in 2015

[Cris]

Thanks Jon; some good advice.

Maybe mention the dangers of chkdsk, fsck, SpinRite, etc,

[jono-ats]

Cris:

Good points. There are lots of bad practices, and I surely missed many of them.

Jon

[fzabkar]

The LeCroy DDA-120 Disk Drive Analyzer looks very impressive, even though it dates back to 1999. How does its 1 GHz bandwidth handle 1.5 Gbps SATA drives?

[pcimage]

The LeCroy DDA-120 Disk Drive Analyzer looks very impressive, even though it dates back to 1999. How does its 1 GHz bandwidth handle 1.5 Gbps SATA drives?

Th photo is probably for illustrative purposes, I guess Jon didn't anticipate the document was to be nit-picked for petty anomalies.

[fzabkar]

The LeCroy DDA-120 Disk Drive Analyzer looks very impressive, even though it dates back to 1999. How does its 1 GHz bandwidth handle 1.5 Gbps SATA drives?

Th photo is probably for illustrative purposes, I guess Jon didn't anticipate the document was to be nit-picked for petty anomalies.

I could easily "illustrate" my computer and disc drive experience with some 30-year-old kit that I have boxed up in my garage, and which cost me an arm and a leg, but I would think that discerning customers would prefer to see some state-of-the-art equipment (of which I have none).

[jono-ats]

The DDA-120 has insufficient bandwidth for newer drives. It's fine for older stuff.

And no, I didn't expect to be nit-picked about it. it was for illustrative purposes only; the intended audience would have very little chance of ever seeing or working with one.

The article was intended to show best practices; not to give an illustrated inventory of the best lab gear to use today for data recovery. Sorry if I disappointed you, fzabkar.

[fzabkar]

@jono-ats, you have audaciously proposed that your white paper constitutes "best practice" for the data recovery profession. Therefore it is to be expected that it will be assessed on that basis.

[jono-ats]

You missed the mark. As noted, the target audience is not D.R. pros, but people like yourself, who represent themselves to be service techs, etc.

Nonetheless, I invite you to improve upon it, fzabkar. I'll look forward to your relevant suggestions.

[jono-ats]

Spildit:

Thanks for your insights.

Most of your suggestions apply to those who do more than image drives. I guess that means there is plenty of material for additional chapters . . .

Jon