SalvationData Product Usage and Success Rate

[AlterEgo]

Hello Everyone,

I need to know about the performance , success rate and user friendliness of using any Salvation Data Products. I was planning to buy one but I am unable to guess which of the product specifically would be able to address to my situation which is as follows. Any help or guidance or sharing of your experience with Salavation Data products would be highly appreciated.

I also had the famous Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 One Terabyte harddisk, which has gone down with all my valuable data which was never backed up. Tried hooking up the hard disk to an external sata enclosure box. The disk spins up, makes some mild clicking sounds and spins down and keeps repeating the same procedure, even tried hooking it up with the PC's internal SATA connection and the behaviour is the same.

I have read a lot of reviews and rescue stories about this particular mode of seagate, but am unable to figure out what could be the reason or where to start looking for the recovery process. It can be the firmware problem, or any other mechanical or electronic problem.

My details are as follows :

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
Model: ST31000333AS
S/N : 6TE08QZ5
P/N: 9FZ136-568
Firmware: SD35
Date Code: 09204
Site Code: SU
PCB (printed on right corner of PCB) : 100512588 Rev A

I need to know that in such a situation what product should I order or use. or rather any of the product is useful in such case or not. What is the success rate of the professionals who use these products in similar cases. I have just asked for a quotation from Salvation Data.

1. HD Doctor Pro (for Seagate)
2. HDE Pro (to maybe change platters or heads, of course by using professional services)
2. Data Compass

I just need the bare minimum like if the harddisk starts working and gets detected again then I can make a simple image or copy using any windows software (maybe I would not need advanced imaging products like Data Compass).

Thanks for all the info you share.
Regards.

[drc]

Unfortunately these are not going to help you. If your drive is clicking it is not the standard 7200.11 issue, and if it comes to physical repair someone who has never done it before is really not going to be successful on one of these drives. They're challenging even for people with experience.

[cheadledatarecovery]

Agreed, if you Seagate is clicking most likely you have a head assembly failure. Anything over 750GB capacity and the media density is very high and consequently very hard to work with even for the most experienced person.

With regard to reviewing the Salavation products.

1) It has a reasonable user interface. However, the firmware of Seagate drives (excluding 7200.11) is quite robust and rarely fails. The Salvation product does have limited support for the 7200.11 with some one button fixes. However, I find that the one button fixes aren't very responsive and that I am better of using the command console. If you are not experienced using the command console be very, very careful. A missing comma or wrong value entered can lose you your data.

2) HDE Pro. I've not had personal experience of this. I know Salavation have redesigned this in an attempt to deal with the spacers found on new hard disks.

3) I use the data compass. Although I do not have direct experience with other data extractors, the Data Compass seems to work very well. Although I've not managed to get the selective head function working yet.

[prodata]

talking about success rate. it is not about what tool u used,. but it is about how well u understand Harddrive, and How well your qualification. Tool just only can help you to make work easier. and One point . NO ANY TOOL CAN HELP YOU IF YOUR DRIVE GOT HEAD PROBLEM... you need to ask a PRO JOB

[thatdellguy]

Success rates would be higher and support calls lower if SD provided a detailed manual for each button. The translation from Chinese to English is rather crude making some buttons a mystery (click and pray). SD need only ask one of us bi-lingual minions to translate the tools but so far has relied on good old internet translations. If you read good Chinese go for it but tools alone will not help you unless you have a firm understanding of how hard drives work.

[hddmania]

Is it just me??? for over a month, SD customer support became very poor for the customers who purchased all of their tools. When I contact them as a prospective buyers, they'll try to give me all the good sales pitch but when I contact them as an exsisting customers, I get placed on hold forever... Even get execuse that it's their meal break and gotta go but won't come back. Their tools seems to d a lot of good things, but without a manual, it is very hard to use. They sell the tools to you stating they provide great live tech support but I haven't seen it much in action when we need them.

[falther]

Infact the manuals would be on the way - if only SD is willing to accept that a
compensation for a lot of time and work is necessary - even SD does not sell
their tools for free.

A member of this forum spent countless hours to write manuals - tested function
for function ... It looks like its produced for own use and for the bottom drawer in
her desk ...

Even for a supporting person its exhausting to see how people hinder themselves.
A correct and complete english manual for an internationally offered tool is an
elementary step BEFORE it is introduced on the market.

If a company does not produce that - even after countless requests and complaints
from existing customers - sorry to say - that looks like there is not enough money
to do that. And - as I wrote months ago - its ONLY a question of money.

But, we also have to consider, that SD sells most probably a lot into their own chinese
market. Might be that the rest of the world does not look so interesting at all for them
to spend that money or compensation?

+++

[falther]

+++

[falther]

One has to be fair:

English Flash Doctor Manual is close to be finished by SD - just in proof reading

+++

[guru]

I think we need a company to compete directly with Ac3lab I hope it would bring down the price and also "UP" the quality of the offering

[falther]

For those who want to have an deeper explanation of the SD tools
they might attend a 2 days course in Europe.

Here is a link for that:

http://www.salvationdata.com/news/data- ... -italy.htm

+++

[thatdellguy]

This forum has 100 times more information in it than any two day course. Your wasting your money...

[guru]

I think (sorry to upset anyone) if you use SD tools you are not really giving your customer the best that there is. Salvage data is most probably just for level 2 recovery companies. If you mean to do well your better off buying the other versions of recovery hardware that is out there

You get what you pay for...

[thatdellguy]

If you mean to do well your better off buying the other versions of recovery hardware that is out there...You get what you pay for...

I totally agree, just wish SD would make more of an effort to compete with the big boys.

[drc]

I agree with this as well.

[ppumkin]

My success rate is 100%

This is for tutorial I followed step by step ( i am new to DR)

My success rate is 0%

For hard drives I experimented on...

-
I do like the DC Compass --
-- the HD Doctors software offers pre-configures commands dealing with terminal (sound good to me- Im still learning all the terminal stuff) -otherwise if you dont know what todo-- and dont wanna learn- dont buy it-- send it to TheDellManGuy pro recovery..