HDD GURU FORUMS

Wish they had on for each brand for newbies like me.

I saw this too late:

thinking-buying-product-please-contact-first-t14443.html

you can also pm me for newbies experience. I just purchase the whole kit. Can give you honest opinion and I am looking for users in other areas that have the SD tools to chat with. I would really like to hear from someone that has SD and somethings in their shop.

Thanks in advance,

Kou

i also was looking at sd tools for my new dr lab

is it worth buying at all?

i dont mind spending the money if they will recover some cases that pc3000 cannot

dave

dr.king wrote:is it worth buying at all?

No. Read my previous posts.

Dr. King..

I am very new to HD recovery. I do have certifications in Cisco/Microsoft and all that other junk. I am currently working in network security so Wireshark/Ethereal.. stuff like that is what I normally mess with.

I have a 2 week old Full Kit that I received 1 week of Feb, that may be going on sale very soon. I have purchased the following:

HD HPE PRO (platter exchange toolkit)
DataCompass Premium (RAID recovery stuff)
Flash Doctor (Flash recovery)
HD Doctor (All except Samsung)

Where are you located?

Everyone I spoke to has led me to believe that I need to go to training prior to committing to a device. I need to understand the basic first.

I cannot speak how good this product is or what it will do. But I do know that the post-sale has been a challenge for someone like me. Salvation Data Support engineers are smart in their own product.

Their marketing says they have in depth training on their products, but I found that to be limited to directions on their case studies, which does not answer my questions about their product. The software also is subjective to the reader.. example, there is no status when recovering. Does not tell you how far along or what it is currently working on. I have sent emails and have not gotten response from sales or support as of it. I do know that they have Chinese New Year there so that may be why.

Also, make sure you understand the training. My decision cycle was over a year long before committing to this device. I was under the impression that there was training involved.. at their facility, and somewhere in New Jersey. If I cannot make it, my understanding was the the support could be scheduled to give training. I have chat logs from the sales on "training by tech support". Be careful, since the training by them is in Chendu only!. They don't have presence in USA or other locations that I am aware of. All the locations they speak about is "partners" that are not part of Salvation but offer additional training of their product for a fee.

I also know that several documents and conversation pre-sales indicated that they can bypass firmware errors, but I have a case and chat log with their tech that says different. I need to find a donor like others devices. This is probably a short-fall on my end of not being more knowledgeable, but they don't explain why/how their product decided that I need donor.

I have instructions that was sent to me and you are welcome to read it. It may make sense to someone with more knowledge, but to me, it is limited and causes me to have more questions to ask.

When I purchase the device, there was no introduction to the device and I was shuffled between the 3 support people that they had. Each, now stays hidden from my MSN account. They are very smart, and was able to get me through the issues I had, but non explained what their tool did during their testing with me. They use TeamViewer to remote support, but so far, each of them keep telling me they cannot connect to me or sometime, they cannot control my mouse, when in fact, I see them moving my mouse around. My perception is that, they got tired of me for the first week I had this, and now makes it hard for me to get support from them. One sent me a picture of how the serial connection was suppose to connect, but finally I reverse the connection opposite of the picture and document then it worked, didn't seem like the tech believed me.

I am in network support, so I understand users that are just stupid and how frustrating it is. But I do appreciate users that try to ask questions and understand that they need to be on the internet before they can use internet resources. I tend to understand users that try to understand before calling about something as simple as plugging in the network cable for network access.

I don't get that same feeling about these technicians. I get the feeling that you should already now what the options mean in their tool set.

Brings me to this post. I am looking for someone local USA, that has a devices that is not selling or part of selling the Salvation Data kit for some partner support, I am also looking for someone local that would like to see/test this kit with me, so I can post it on YOUTUBE for others to see and compare to the PC3000 or Atola tool kit.

I am willing to take my Salvation Data kit to somewhere in the US and do a side by side comparison on the same recovery with another brand to post for others to see.

I am also willing to share my screen to you so you can see the tool kit if you want. Hoping it will give you more informative info on your quest to buy the kit.

I wish I had that kind of info during my search.

As to thatdellguy response, I still believe it is subjective, and I believe his perception is not far off. It depends what you want out of your money.. some people have lots to leave behind, others don't.

Regards,

Kou
Ps.. let me know if you want to test the screen via teamviewer or netmeeting. I would be happy to give you control and learn something new since their support won't teach me..

Hi Kou,

I just saw your post and felt the same immediately.
I have done limited research and decided to buy the whole range of SD tools.
I am a software and network engineer in my occupation but decided to open a DR business 7 months ago so i bought their gear and trying to learn it, i also find their support quite hard to deal with.
I am trying to educated myself as much as i can, and managed to do so with few cases since then.
It will be very good if we can share knowledge and help each other with these tools as this industry is quite rough and close. I use to the software industry which you can get help quite easily but not here.
Anyway let me know if you would like to keep in touch and help each other, I'll be glad to do so.

Cheers,
Oded, Australia

Hello odedshankar,

PM me and we can take this offline. I have found that others in this industry does not see information sharing as open was you and I.

PM me and we can work together.

Thanks again,

Regards,

Kou

Cheers Kou,

Would love to do that.

Cheers Buddy,
Oded

Salvation Data Tools, are ok for testing and learning some basics, but I would not take my damaged hard drive to someone who only has Salvation Data tools. Although the price is good and very enticing specially for the new startup, the tools are very limited and can not keep up with their competitors. We also use SD tools in our lab, but only for some of the more simpler issues, mainly when other tools are tied up. But it's a fact that Salvation Data tools just don't have the same functionality as some other tools and therefore your success rate will always be reduced. Also please keep in mind that Salvation Data pops out a new product every few months, rather then trying to perfect the functionality of their current product lines.

SD tools has many bugs ( un fixed yet) example: cannot read proper head numbers sometimes
gives false info which leads to false diagnose

cannot read few modules in 2.5 hdd (WD) which is bad to re-create ROM

plus many reported problems and they ignore or still developing ,, we never know

I use the Salvation Data HD Doctors to troubleshoot drives that are not recognized that I suspect may have firmware damage. Their data recovery tools are a work in progress, but they cost much less than a PC 3000. Since I run a part time data recovery business, the price of a PC 3000 is out of reach. I use a mix of tools from Atola, YEC Ninja, Salvation Data and others etc.

you can contact me by pm if you have issues on the decision of the tools. I don't sell tools, but i used most of them and based on my experience i can provide information and help.