Data Compass vs HD Doctor

[Nick_CT]

Hello,

This is my first post so if the info I want is in another thread or this is in the wrong part of the forum, apologies. Please point me in the right direction.

I've read as much as I can about the Salvation Data products DC and HD Doctor. I'm english speaking and I find the chinese-english on their site hard to comprehend. Also, any Googling on the topic only brings back results that seem to be 'planted' by SalvationData themselves. Not that I mind, but I would like an outsider's opinion.

Can someone please give me a basic breakdown of the difference between the two products? As well as what HDD problems you could fix with one but not the other? I have been in contact with their sales staff but all I get is copy/paste info.

If this discussion is somewhere else please point me to it. Or if you yourself have of these products I would appreciate if I could contact you to ask for you advice and opinions.

Thanks very much,

[pclab]

HD Doctors, are the tools that allow you to diagnose any bad drive and repair it, if the drive has problems like not being recognized, etc.
There is 1 Doctor for each brand of disks.

DC it's to use after you repair the disks, to image and recover the data from the disks.

This is a very resumed explanation of them.

[Nick_CT]

Thanks for the info.

At this point I have tools to image the drive (ddrescue for example) and have my own set of applications to fix the logical issues, recover files and partitions etc.

I need to be able to repair issues where the drives aren't even being detected in the BIOS due to issues with the drive's SA etc.

I need to be able to get the physical drives to be viewable in my OS, once that is done I can do the rest. So is HDD Doctor useful restoring drives in this scenario?

[ppumkin]

Yes, but get ready for more copy and paste info if you need help from SD. Remote assistance is a nice plus from them- but don't expect long winded explanations.

If you never have done HD repair its a big learning curve. There is Slavation Data HD Doctors and then you get PC-3000 too. There are fakes out there too- be carefull.

Your choice will most probably depend on budget. Nice thing is that SD doctor has a module for each make of HDD. And the prices are reasonable especially life time support and upgrades.

Please just browse through the Salvation Data Topics - there are many discussions about the differences.

Salvation Data is marketing aggressive. They boast one-click repair features - but fail to mention the success rate of that.. there is no one click solution that will fix all issues..

[hmnet]

this is my first post here too, i saw people saying a lot of bad things about sd, i use hrt, pc3k, my tools and recently i bought wd doctor from sd to see by my self (not earing opinions of people, based on opinions of other people and so), is true that it have some one touch fix, that ....well, for me, may be is not the best choice to fix a hdd, but that wd doctor thing works in the traditional way too, and it do it well, but the point here is taht you could buy pc3k, sd, or what ever, but for sure you will do a mess if you dont know what to do, or if you try to figure out what to do with 0 knowledge. Not all is "to have the tools" the most important thing is to know what to do with "the tools". HDD mastery take a lot of time and effort, and of course, MONEY.

cheers

[ppumkin]

Lots of money and HDD's - because you going to brick them by the ton to learn; and then you going to have to unbrick them-- because your learning data recovery right!

[Nick_CT]

It's like everything isn't it, you have to break stuff in order to learn how to fix it. HDD's will be my equivalent of guinea pigs. Would you recommend HDD Doctor to be a good tool to start off with and learn some of the basics? Or would I be better off starting elsewhere...

It is relatively cheap compared to the other (and obviously better and more complete) products out there, but we can't all start with things like PC3000 and Atola, money doesn't come easily these days.