Name and shame - FRAUDULENT DR COMPANIES

[Odiferous]

I had a case where i had to recover a Seagate. I always got the error the mods were not compatible.
After checking out, i found the company where it was before (and where my client asked to return the drive without recovering) had changed the pcb.
When asked for the original PCB they said they could not find it anymore.

We saw that many times. Almost every tenth drive which came from another DR company (and we have them quite a lot) to us has some problems with non-original parts. And usually asking those companies for original parts will not succeed

Eventually i had to give up because i could not find the correct pcb.
Dobre

Well, we actually did recover some cases even w/o original parts. And defenitely non-original Seagate PCB (except for SCSI and 7200.11 drives: these drive are 50/50 ) wouldn't stop us

Er - doomer - (cough)

Sean will know what I mean.


Duncan

[Doomer]

Er - doomer - (cough)
Sean will know what I mean.
Duncan

I'm sorry
I didn't get it
I am not very good in English
If you have something to say - say it

[guru]

Does Alex still work with you in Chicargo?

[hddguy]

I'm sorry
I didn't get it
I am not very good in English
If you have something to say - say it

I see you work for Seagate DR (your avatar!), maybe duncan is just bitter cos he hasnt quite finished 'busting Seagate's DR division wide open.'

[MANDR]

Just out of curiosity, and assuming this is the right topic to ask this question, and assuming doomer does indeed work for Seagate Data Recovery, a previous post of odiferous state that he recieved a HD that had previously been to Seagate Data Recovery, and there were 'anomalies in that what Seagate purported to have engineered was fabrication.'

Any truth in this? Is there something that goes on in Seagate DR that everyone needs to be aware of?

[Odiferous]

Just out of curiosity, and assuming this is the right topic to ask this question, and assuming doomer does indeed work for Seagate Data Recovery, a previous post of odiferous state that he recieved a HD that had previously been to Seagate Data Recovery, and there were 'anomalies in that what Seagate purported to have engineered was fabrication.'

Any truth in this? Is there something that goes on in Seagate DR that everyone needs to be aware of?

Bear in mind this was with a Seagate DR in *one* particular country - it does not infer that Seagate DR as a whole are in the same vein. I would certainly hope not.


Duncan

[hddguy]

Bear in mind this was with a Seagate DR in *one* particular country - it does not infer that Seagate DR as a whole are in the same vein. I would certainly hope not.


Duncan

Shame though, because I always thought highly of Actionfront, but since seagate bought them out they seem to have lowered their standard a little! Never heard of many complaints against actionfront, but now am hearing lots about seagate DR.

[Doomer]

Never heard of many complaints against actionfront, but now am hearing lots about seagate DR.

I can understand that
I heard a lot of complains about Microsoft but frankly Windows is most usable OS in the world
Actionfront was good DR company but with really low PR company.
Don't forget Seagate bought Actionfront with all people in there. Seagate is a big company, everybody wants a piece of it
Before Seagate bought Actionfront everybody can hear a lot of complains about Ontrack but still Ontrack is the biggest DR company in the world

Odiferous
I still didn't see the case which you were loudly talking about. It looks like black PR with "I'am the best honest and honerable guy" bullcrap
You think you got something? Cool. Good for you. You got one case (But I think you might be wrong).
We have houndreds of them: non-original PCBs, flip-overred platters, bent heads, re-written SA etc. We don't complain about it and we don't "fingerpointing" to anybody to use this as black PR company we just don't have time for it:) Our clients interested in their data not in black PR and we are recovering their data

[MANDR]

Before Seagate bought Actionfront everybody can hear a lot of complains about Ontrack but still Ontrack is the biggest DR company in the world

Lets be fair here, they may be the biggest but I dont believe they are the best. I have been involved in job application interviews with engineers wanting to leave Ontrack, and I was not impressed at all! Also, I know there have been complaints against the company I work for, mainly from non experienced DR guys in non experienced DR companies who are simply trying to justify why they cant give the same level of service I have. Also, whoever said the customer is always right obviously wasnt in the DR game, and I believe that if you dont get complaints then you are doing something wrong!

Odiferous
I still didn't see the case which you were loudly talking about. It looks like black PR with "I'am the best honest and honerable guy" bullcrap
You think you got something? Cool. Good for you. You got one case (But I think you might be wrong).

Would be interesting to know the extent of duncans skills and abilities in comparison to yours! I like a good cat fight!

[hddguy]

I can understand that
I heard a lot of complains about Microsoft but frankly Windows is most usable OS in the world
Actionfront was good DR company but with really low PR company.
Don't forget Seagate bought Actionfront with all people in there. Seagate is a big company, everybody wants a piece of it

Just saying it as i see it. The problem is that if you do 1000 great recoveries, and 1 bad recovery, it is the bad one that is remembered! You seem pretty knowledgable and I dont doubt you are a great technician, but the problem is when you work for a company as large as Seagate, or even Ontrack, and deal with a large volume of media in multiple offices thorughout the world, someone somewhere will make mistakes, no doubt about it.

I also think that anyone here who says they have never made a crucial mistake in the early days of learning DR is not being totally truthful.

But I dont think this topis was made to discuss mistakes and freak accidents, it is to discuss the intentional malicious acts of supposed DR experts to ensure data is non recoverable elsewhere. There is a difference

[Doomer]

Lets be fair here, they (Ontrack) may be the biggest but I dont believe they are the best.

Totally agree but they still have market

[Odiferous]

Never heard of many complaints against actionfront, but now am hearing lots about seagate DR.

I can understand that
I heard a lot of complains about Microsoft but frankly Windows is most usable OS in the world
Actionfront was good DR company but with really low PR company.
Don't forget Seagate bought Actionfront with all people in there. Seagate is a big company, everybody wants a piece of it
Before Seagate bought Actionfront everybody can hear a lot of complains about Ontrack but still Ontrack is the biggest DR company in the world

Odiferous
I still didn't see the case which you were loudly talking about. It looks like black PR with "I'am the best honest and honerable guy" bullcrap
You think you got something? Cool. Good for you. You got one case (But I think you might be wrong).
We have houndreds of them: non-original PCBs, flip-overred platters, bent heads, re-written SA etc. We don't complain about it and we don't "fingerpointing" to anybody to use this as black PR company we just don't have time for it:) Our clients interested in their data not in black PR and we are recovering their data

I don't quite understand the animosity.

What does concern me, though, is that a manufacturer of hard drives provides a service to recover failed hard drives.

And when I find that the manufacturer of currently one of the must unreliable drives on the planet owns a data recovery operation, one has to question the ethical justification.

Seagate don't scare me one iota - and nor do Apple. I have publicly slated them (google the two words retrodata flaw) and will continue to do so, as long as they (and any other company) continue to produce products that are clearly not fit for purpose.

If you wish to keep your head buried in the sand - that's your prerogative. But don't expect me to start biting the dust with you.

Thanks

Duncan

[pepe]

Hi

2 points of view:
1. If - let's just say - a large company with high prices receive a drive with some modification, this is probably due to the fact the previous company was not able/qualified enough to do the job and screwed it up. Not with the intention to harden the work of the guys coming next. The large company does not get the drive because the previous quotation was high, but because they at the previous firm could not solve things.
2. Let's say a small (with lower prices) company receives a job after a large (highly priced) company. This mostly does not happen because the large company could not come up with a solution, rather because the quotation was high. Now if the large company does some tricks it is not due to their low qualification or abilities, but rather comes from the intention to make things harder for the cheaper concurrent firms.

2 totally different motivations.
But from the customer's perspective neither is desirable, so we are screwed up again

pepe

[hddguy]

Hi

2 points of view:
1. If - let's just say - a large company with high prices receive a drive with some modification, this is probably due to the fact the previous company was not able/qualified enough to do the job and screwed it up. Not with the intention to harden the work of the guys coming next. The large company does not get the drive because the previous quotation was high, but because they at the previous firm could not solve things.
2. Let's say a small (with lower prices) company receives a job after a large (highly priced) company. This mostly does not happen because the large company could not come up with a solution, rather because the quotation was high. Now if the large company does some tricks it is not due to their low qualification or abilities, but rather comes from the intention to make things harder for the cheaper concurrent firms.

2 totally different motivations.
But from the customer's perspective neither is desirable, so we are screwed up again

pepe

I think you just nailed it

[Odiferous]

Hi

2 points of view:
1. If - let's just say - a large company with high prices receive a drive with some modification, this is probably due to the fact the previous company was not able/qualified enough to do the job and screwed it up. Not with the intention to harden the work of the guys coming next. The large company does not get the drive because the previous quotation was high, but because they at the previous firm could not solve things.
2. Let's say a small (with lower prices) company receives a job after a large (highly priced) company. This mostly does not happen because the large company could not come up with a solution, rather because the quotation was high. Now if the large company does some tricks it is not due to their low qualification or abilities, but rather comes from the intention to make things harder for the cheaper concurrent firms.

2 totally different motivations.
But from the customer's perspective neither is desirable, so we are screwed up again

pepe

That's a fair appraisal, pepe.

However in this particular case, the DR company had recovered the data, and quoted. My client declined based on the high price. The DR company said they would keep his data for a year, regardless.

When we received it, steps had clearly been taken in an attempt to prevent recovery, meaning that DR company theoretically had the only data that would ever come off the drive.

They didn't account for the fact that small does not always equal incompetent - and it was cracked. The client received his data at substantially lower cost.

This is the case that we are going to publicise. The public should be made aware of companies who take advantage of their standing in their market in such a fraudulent manner. It's just not on.


Duncan

[Doomer]

When we received it, steps had clearly been taken in an attempt to prevent recovery, meaning that DR company theoretically had the only data that would ever come off the drive.

That is really interesting
I am looking forward to see it
I think if any DR company REALLY wants to prevent DR from a drive that company could easily do that. Didn't you think if you were able to recover data from that drive the previous DR company didn't really want to prevent that?
You words seem foolish

I can assure you if I really want to prevent you from DR from any drive I can do that and you will not able to recover data
But I personally will never do that if we are talking about this motive

[Jinx]

Duncan, if you were able to recover it then I absolutely do not see what the company you are talking about did wrong. Of course they had to make the data inaccessible, what do you expect them to do? Oh the customer did not want to pay, lets just give him back a working drive anyways because we are so nice??? If they really wanted to make it unrecoverable it is simple enough to "simulate" a head crash and cause substantial damage to the platter.

[hddguy]

I agree with duncan that these malicious DR companies need to be identified, but in my opinion returning failed heads to a HDD after a customer does not approve the quotation following head replacement, is much different to creating irrepairable damage to the platters. It is starting to seem that some people are having difficulty in telling the difference

Why not tell us here the details of the job mentioned?

[pepe]

Hi,

I met all kinds of tricks from one company. Most of them just made the recovery process harder, but I remember one when the LBA space was filled with garbage from LBA 63 till the end of the drive.
The drive was suffering of bad heads BTW.

pepe

[falther]

Just a question to the profs:

You get a system with corrupted data (only software problems) - you inform customer at 9.30 pm (!) because she argued she needs the system immediately. She accepts to get the data on external drive next morning (after she asked - "can you do this still tonight..?" (What I did not accept). We agreed then for next morning to be ready.
You get up next day at 6.00 am and prepare everything to be ready when opening office at 09.30am.
Her husband calls that morning at 9.30 am and wants to pick up the system without any changes and work - he wants to pass it on to a fried "who is much cheaper".
According to HIS words - his wife did not order any work to be done from us .....

What would you do now (Be nice or be bad) ?