Too good to be true?

[kenjin]

Hello!

I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to DR, so I don't know my elbow from my backside. I am an otherwise pretty experienced tech looking after a lot of people; so I'm thinking I'd like to add basic DR to the list of things I can help with. I've had a lot of drives come through lately that have all had to be shipped off to a third party; some of them were badly damaged but a few were only lightly damaged. I'd rather be able to take care of these myself, if I could.

I found this while going through these forums: http://www.drivestar.org/product/hddtool/pc3000_pci.htm . It's in my price range, and is about the only tool that is

But it seems too cheap?

So I'm wondering: what sort of capability does this device have? I'm not after heavy duty DR; but drives that mostly read but timeout making timely data recovery almost impossible are what I'm hoping to work with. Anything more damaged would still be forwarded to a proper data recovery company. Will it let me fix Seagate drives affected by the firmware issue? I've had a few through; it would be nice if I could handle something like that in-house rather than outsourcing it. Will this device give me any advantage that spinrite doesn't already?

And finally: is it too good to be true? If I ordered this, would I get something completely useless? Or a fake that more or less does the job?

I have plenty of drives to practice on before I touch real customer's drives, so I'm hopefully not going to be making matters worse!

Any advice will be greatly appreciated!

[pcfhdd]

Cheap Chinese knock off

[kenjin]

But is it a functional cheap Chinese knockoff?

Alternatively - is there a software solution in that price range that will do the job? Would suit me better actually; I'd far rather buy and download something than wait for shipping and have to mess about plugging stuff in every time I wanted to play with a drive...

[dobrevjetser]

It comes with NO support and as far as i remember the manual was in Russian
Also new drives are not supported

This is a rip-off.

Dobre

[kenjin]

Duly noted and hopes dashed Ah well - thankyou for letting me know, and saving me some cash.

Any recommendations? I just want to be able to recover data from drives that are only slightly munted, i.e. I can still mount them in windows bu then they freeze my system after a while: anything really broken would still go to professionals.

[dobrevjetser]

Go for a deepspar and some good software.
Or if you really want to keep it cheap you can try copy-R instead of deepspar (compare a lada to a BMW; they will both get you there but there is a difference in how you get there )

Dobre

[falther]

see pm

+++

[kenjin]

Thanks for all the advice guys!

I reckon I might have to re-evaluate my expectations I'm still keen to get into DR, but I'm resigned now to thinking of it as a much longer term goal than originally planned. Quite hard to justify the dollars and time required vs. the number of drives I'd repair (and hence money made)... but I'll find a way.

I can't believe I never came across copyr before - looks like it might be enough to get data back in a few cases where the client won't spend the money for proper DR, but the drive isn't that badly massed up. Thanks!

[jerry]

that forums website is a chinese website.it was without certificate .
so buy nothing from it.
In my comment pc3k and others are not run as your expectation.
Mhdd and THDD with help you in some extend

[wallstreet]

kenjin, instead of using copy-r. Use freeware DDRescue thats avaliable for Linux platforms. Its very powerful and does everything copy-r does besides one thing which is power on. It supports reverse cloning and is highly automated. Learn the commands and it does the job exactly as you want it. Its AMAZING!

p.s gddrescue is the package name in linux, NOT DD_RESCUE.
gddrescue = ddrescue
dd_rescue = not the same tool

[Zero Alpha]

ddrescue is very limited and depending on the problem you could permanently destroy clients data. But hey you get what you pay for.

[ppumkin]

Its uses much older version of the real software that is cracked. To be expected from Shenzen- its clone capital of the world.

The problem is that it can stop working with out notice and you would have to purchase it all over again with a newer cracked version.

Does not support most newer drives and you need to find and pay somebody to teach you after hours how to use it.

If you want basic repair and diagnostic tools then contact Salvation Data and their HD Doctors. They are the same price range per Model and lifetime updates and support (bare in mind its chinese support agents speaking english - but you are entitled to it)
These tools can destroy your hard drive faster than you can repair them. So be prepared - your opening pandoras box. Never work on clients data- test firs on dudb hdd's

You might be better if buying DeepSpars DiskImager for hard drives with bad sectors and some other issues. ITs really good and fast. These other tools are really hectic and time consuming.

Good luck mate

PS - Learning curve about 6-12 Months... to basic understanding... then its just more frustration..

DDI- Out of the box- no problems- just go.