Deepspar V Atola Imager - actual comparison

[CK]

Well.....finally got my greasy hands on a shiny new Atola Imager.

Have it up and running in our lab now and I have imaged a few drives with it. Still learning the ropes but I'll provide you with my honest opinion of the unit in the next couple of weeks.

I've been a loyal Deepspar customer but thought it was worth a shot seeing as it is so reasonably priced.

Watch this space..............

[bcometa]

can't wait to see your comparison -- i too use the deepspar and love it, and I'm also thinking of getting an insight, but am curious how the imaging part differs (so far deepspar has worked 95% of the time in this area) from deepspar.
thanks!

[buster80]

any update guys?, im about to buy insight imager or deepspar imager today or tomorrow.

got a couple of real flakey drives on my desk i cant access because of bad sectors

thanks

andy

p.s pm me if you have any advice on these two units

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

Well.....finally got my greasy hands on a shiny new Atola Imager.

Have it up and running in our lab now and I have imaged a few drives with it. Still learning the ropes but I'll provide you with my honest opinion of the unit in the next couple of weeks.

I've been a loyal Deepspar customer but thought it was worth a shot seeing as it is so reasonably priced.

Watch this space..............

CK ,
Jaggo As They Call In My Native Language ,Man Get the Review Out

[lcoughey]

I've landed my hands on an Atola Imager. I'm currently working on a comparison chart between DeepSpar Disk Imager, Atola Imager (Ethernet) and DD_Rescue. I'm not making any promises, but should have a reasonably educated opinion within the next few days. If anyone has any questions about specific features, PM me and I will be sure to add them to my list of things to test.

[Amarbir[CDR-Labs]]

I've landed my hands on an Atola Imager. I'm currently working on a comparison chart between DeepSpar Disk Imager, Atola Imager (Ethernet) and DD_Rescue. I'm not making any promises, but should have a reasonably educated opinion within the next few days. If anyone has any questions about specific features, PM me and I will be sure to add them to my list of things to test.

Luke ,
It would Be Great If you Could Tell And Give Us Some First Hands Experience With The Tools ,I Am Seriously Looking for a Great Cloning Tool Other then ACE .My Full concentration is on this tool and deepspar might be master dimitry can shed some light on this issue for me

[lcoughey]

Okay, I've finished my review. I plan to test and play with a few more things, so don't be surprised if there are some tweaks over time.

http://www.recoveryforce.com/articles/5 ... omparisons

If you notice any mistakes, please let me know and I will verify and make the necessary corrections. If someone wants to send me a Salvation Data - Data Compass or any other products, I'd be more than happy to put them through their paces and add them to my review.

Luke

[drc]

Thanks for the writeup, Luke.

IMHO not having the ability to create and use head maps is going to put anyone way behind the curve these days

[lcoughey]

Thanks for the writeup, Luke.

IMHO not having the ability to create and use head maps is going to put anyone way behind the curve these days

Really? We use this feature on almost every project. Most of the time, media damage is restricted to a single head and it is very nice to be able to mirror the other heads first and go back and tweak the imager settings to get the best results with the remaining head(s). There are times when we mirror 3 out of 4 heads, change the heads and mirror the remaining head, knowing that have the assurance that we have mirrored as much as we could prior to the head change.
If you are just doing the odd data recovery job, then it probably won't have much affect. But, when you have a very large volume of projects running through on a daily basis, I'd say that head mapping and imaging by heads is essential.

[Starling]

That's what he's saying

[buster80]

interesting

thanks

andy

[drc]

That's what he's saying

Yeah. Sorry, I meant that if you don't have the ability to image by heads then you are going to be way behind everyone else

[lcoughey]

That's what he's saying

Yeah. Sorry, I meant that if you don't have the ability to image by heads then you are going to be way behind everyone else

Sorry, I had completely misread the original statement. I'm glad that we are all in agreement on this.

[bcometa]

very cool comparison - thanks for sharing! glad to see the deepspar is the winner, looks like I made the right choice

[CK]

Hi Luke,

I agree with your findings, I haven't had much time to compile mine like the way you have.

What I miss most with Atola is the ability to jump x number of sectors. I find that DDI has far more control over the drive.

Also, if you pause the imaging process, it automatically turns off the destination drive - I find this very annoying.

Bear in mind that Atola is quite new on the scene and improvements are being made to it all the time (head map/selective head imaging). With the right feedback and suggestions, it will improve.

[lcoughey]

Hi Luke,

I agree with your findings, I haven't had much time to compile mine like the way you have.

What I miss most with Atola is the ability to jump x number of sectors. I find that DDI has far more control over the drive.

Also, if you pause the imaging process, it automatically turns off the destination drive - I find this very annoying.

Bear in mind that Atola is quite new on the scene and improvements are being made to it all the time (head map/selective head imaging). With the right feedback and suggestions, it will improve.

Excellent points, I forgot to add the jump feature and comment on the power off issue. I also noticed yesterday afternoon when playing with a drive with a lot of media damage at the 60% mark that all the Atola Imager does is narrows in on those sectors, but other than a longer read timeout, it doesn't (can't) manipulate how the drive reads those sectors. It would be nice to drop down to PIO mode or tell the drive to read the sectors, ignoring ECC. Instead, it just reports a UNC error, gives up and moves on.

Don't get me wrong, in most cases, missing a few thousand sectors is fine. However, when it comes to a client's Quickbooks database, every sector is critical. I think that Atola certainly has potential, but I'm not sure that it is ready to consider itself a true competitor to DeepSpar on the imaging front.

Realistically speaking, I'm not sure what the hardware is needed for. Under the hood, it is just a standard system board booting into Linux. At the very least, give external access to the KVM and let the user work with the unit directly instead of having to use another system to connect to it via ethernet.

[falther]

...
At the very least, give external access to the KVM and let the user work with the unit directly
instead of having to use another system to connect to it via ethernet.

One unit combined:
It would be more expensive
You would need a bigger case and a stronger cpu to run all in one.
You would need more space for the unit plus an extra monitor and an extra keyboard.

Now - as it is:
It is small and you can use it with any existing pc.


***
falther

[mediaman]

Hi Luke,

I agree with your findings, I haven't had much time to compile mine like the way you have.

What I miss most with Atola is the ability to jump x number of sectors. I find that DDI has far more control over the drive.

Also, if you pause the imaging process, it automatically turns off the destination drive - I find this very annoying.

Bear in mind that Atola is quite new on the scene and improvements are being made to it all the time (head map/selective head imaging). With the right feedback and suggestions, it will improve.

Excellent points, I forgot to add the jump feature and comment on the power off issue. I also noticed yesterday afternoon when playing with a drive with a lot of media damage at the 60% mark that all the Atola Imager does is narrows in on those sectors, but other than a longer read timeout, it doesn't (can't) manipulate how the drive reads those sectors. It would be nice to drop down to PIO mode or tell the drive to read the sectors, ignoring ECC. Instead, it just reports a UNC error, gives up and moves on.

Don't get me wrong, in most cases, missing a few thousand sectors is fine. However, when it comes to a client's Quickbooks database, every sector is critical. I think that Atola certainly has potential, but I'm not sure that it is ready to consider itself a true competitor to DeepSpar on the imaging front.

Realistically speaking, I'm not sure what the hardware is needed for. Under the hood, it is just a standard system board booting into Linux. At the very least, give external access to the KVM and let the user work with the unit directly instead of having to use another system to connect to it via ethernet.

I may have got the wrong angle here (being the eternal newbie and all but atola does jump. You can select from different imaging paths, our create your own. Basically you set how many sectors to jump, and the timeout before jump. On bad discs I normally use one of the defaults and then after the 4 th or 5th imaging pass (5 are standard) I will create my own, maybe in reverse, and then hit "Resume" effectively targeting the non-readable sectors in the first imaging passes. You can also export the error list, although I have not seen/worked out how to import it again.

In the last 12 months I have seen radical improvements, and as an early adopter (believer ??!!) I have received the updates. I can bet in 12 months more the gap to DDI will be closing.

I have no commercial relation to atola, i am just a customer.

[mediaman]

Also, to complement:
Wipe destination sector by sector Yes No Yes
Wipe unprocessed sectors Yes No No

These should be YES and YES on Atola (there are some other "yeses" to add too but i must work now

You can 00 fill the destination, (or fill with other patterns) but it is really redundant in Atola, during the imagining passes any non-readable sectors in the source are auto wiped (zero filled) in the destination. (Dmitry told me this and I have tested it, seems to be true, at least i have never seen any non-compatible material found in file extractions). That alone saves so much time, i can now use any old disk as the destination, no prep at all.

Another related point, setting max LBA in destination, I don't see why you would need this either as all file recovery software that I have seen allows you to set the max scanned LBA.

Just my 5 pesos

[Russwinters]

during the imagining passes any non-readable sectors in the source are auto wiped (zero filled) in the destination. (Dmitry told me this and I have tested it, seems to be true, at least i have never seen any non-compatible material found in file extractions).

The only time I have noticed that it does not do this is if you image "only occupied sectors" where if you use a drive that has data on it already it will run together.

Other then that it will do as you have stated.


Regards,