YEC Ninja F - my initial impression

[Odiferous]

I had one of these delivered today, specifically to help with one particular recovery job from a drive with stupid levels of bad sectors.

With this recovery, I'd spent probably 50 hours trying to clone sectors from the damaged drive, using Winhex. I did not reach a point where the recovery could be even remotely satisfactory.

In 40 minutes, the Ninja had cloned the damaged drive to a point where the subsequent recovery was "excellent."

I know Deepspar does a similar sort of thing - but I decided against the Deepspar offering due to it requiring a computer to run from. The Ninja is entirely standalone (although does connect via USB for logging and more advanced features.)

Fantastic product.

Now - will someone please make an offer on my Sonix Logicube???


Duncan

[craig6928]

now that is a fast recovery for sure

how many gigs was the hard drive

i just want to ask some qeastion about the unit

1) did you use the data only function
where it just targets the folders only for the recovery you did

2) have you tried the reverse copying yet at all and what do you think of it

3) how well did it handle the errors did the machine lockup at all


anychance for a review of the unit
and photos

[guru]

Quite funny but I actually came up with that products name strange but true

[Odiferous]

now that is a fast recovery for sure

how many gigs was the hard drive

i just want to ask some qeastion about the unit

1) did you use the data only function
where it just targets the folders only for the recovery you did

2) have you tried the reverse copying yet at all and what do you think of it

3) how well did it handle the errors did the machine lockup at all


anychance for a review of the unit
and photos

Details of the unit are here
http://www.yec-usa.com/products/ninja.html

The drive was a 40GB Seagate momentus.

I first used the reverse clone (recovery method) until it reached the bad sectors, then did a normal clone from sector 0, until it hit that same patch.

In the end, it missed out about 1000 sectors - no user data was in that portion.

It didn't lock up at all on that drive, although it did seem to lock up on a drive I tried yesterday (HTS541 with 1 known bad head.)

Duncan
FOR SALE: Sonix Logicube. One careful user. £495......

[Jinx]

Well someone getting the Ninja over the Deepspar for data recovery is a first to me. I am guessing you really needed the portability aspect?

Are you thinking of getting a Deepspar in the feature? Hint hint: comparison?

[craig6928]

The Ninja was designed as a professional data recovery tool and a lot of data recovery companys use this for imagers

the version ninja f is mainly used for forensic use only
which you pay extra for



i found a company that sells a device for cloaning hard drives by doing it
in reverse mode
im just waiting on a friend to get back to me on this

[Odiferous]

The Ninja was designed as a professional data recovery tool and a lot of data recovery companys use this for imagers

the version ninja f is mainly used for forensic use only
which you pay extra for



i found a company that sells a device for cloaning hard drives by doing it
in reverse mode
im just waiting on a friend to get back to me on this

Craig,

Diskpatch is software that does reverse cloning - vvv good.

The Ninja also achieves this - but it has various options you can select on top which make it way, way better than standard software cloners.


Duncan

[Jinx]

The Ninja was designed as a professional data recovery tool and a lot of data recovery companys use this for imagers

hahaha

On a serious note I was actually considering getting one to try it out... I was told by some people that have tried it that it is just a weaker version of the deepspar, but I did not get a proper explanation. If it is only a bit weaker it might be viable for certain simpler jobs in conjunction with my deepspar units for harder ones.

Duncan: How much did the total turn out in USD if you don't mind sharing that? Could you expand on the "locking up" part? Proper data recovery imaging tools are not supposed to lock up under any circumstances whatsoever... Was there something special there besides the bad head?

Thanks.

[Odiferous]

Jinx,

It cost me £1,000 plus VAT. I did obtain a quote from the US company of about $1,970 or so.

I'm happy with it. One drive I was testing had been imaging for many days on my Sonix Logicube, with practically zero success.

With the Ninja, it completed imaging in under one hour.

It's portable, straightforward to use, and it works.

Perhaps the deepspar does have more features - but it requires a dedicated PC to do the work. The Ninja has so far done what I need, and done it well.

Maybe the deepspar solution is an option for the future - who knows? But for the time being, I'm sticking with the ninja.

[badboy]

http://www.yec-usa.com/products/ninja.html

it seems that the yec is the ninja's agent??

[sceggy]

I can concur with Odiferous comments. We've been using one since first release, and it is superb. We also use PC3K, Logicube Talon, Tableau, Xways Forensics/Winhex for jobs; but for ATA->ATA, SATA->SATA, ATA->SATA, SATA->ATA pure disk copying, reverse copying, unattended bad block basically plug-in and go. The NINJA Term function and ability to send IDE commands directly down the wire or manually create jobs with a script is superb.

Definitely something to add to your tools "aresenal".

scegs

[sempre]

Hi to all!!

Please, Somebody uses ninja here forensic for DR? can divide its experience in clones of hdds with bas blocks (many) and its efficiency in these cases?


Thanks advance!!

[bcometa]

i have a deepspar and ninja. i got the ninja first and it was really good as my first data recovery hardware device. after getting the deepspar, i almost never use the ninja -- except for cloning good drives and wiping drives.

some crucial differences are: you can see the sectors being processed on the display, you can skip sectors (just by pressing space bar), jump around the drive, change parameters on the fly, all in real time. with the ninja, it hits some bad sectors, and even in the "quick mode" still will be very slow when a drive has lots of bad sectors, especially if they are spread out around the drive. it'll hit a bad sector, stop reading after timeout, go to next sector, and continue -- there is no "if I hit 5 bad sectors skip ahead 1000 sectors" - or anything like that.

i used to hit bad sectors on ninja, stop imaging, edit script to work around the bad sectors, upload script, restart imaging, hit bad sectors, start process again. it's a long long process. the deepspar does all this much faster and automatically with many more imaging options. plus deepspar can head map. the reverse on ninja is nice, but you can't "script" in reverse -- at least not a certain range of sectors, like you can in forward mode. i.e. you can write a script to image in reverse, but it must start at very end of drive and go to beginning, not just, for example, sectors 1000000-10000.

also, the clone only data sections is basically useless for me -- I usually work on Mac drives. it doesn't work on them, even though the specs say "smart copy" works on any OS, I can't see how it's different than "copy all" or "backup" copy. with mac drives, no matter what pre-programmed script I use, it always clone the whole thing from start to finish, just like any other clone would.