just wondering what type of imaging software or hard drive cloaning software
members use here

up to now i been using nortons ghost


im thinking of purchasing the Media Tools Professional at $350

Hi,

Someone on this forum will say, the DE is the best with HW support, like head map, and so on...

I think, the best is what the DR pro develops exactly for DR imaging, like me.

The required function:
1. totally 0 automatic retry (not like Windows and Linux does by the default) it can kill the drive!
2. supports to automatic jumping sectors forward and backward.
3. configurable for skipping sectors, and maximum jump-error-rate
4. On case of drive is dead or gets to unstable, do the sleep immediately, and alert the technician.
5. can build a map for backuped and skipped sectors, and can reading only the needed area
6. can read with "until error" retry=0 and "force" mode with retry=X.

This is the best and safe way.

Regards,
Janos

Janos is right, best solution is to build your own tool.
I hope that I will someday also be able to build my own tools, but if you don't have the indepth programming experience and or don't have the time then the purchase of someone elses software will have to do
I use Media tools and it's pretty good. Although It can be very slow if you have alot of bad sectors and or week heads. But definitley better then ghost! The best tool is probably Deepspar, but you will have to sheed out several grand$$$.

Hi,
If you thinking of "Bad & Failing" drives, DE and Media Tools Pro are great....have not try DeepSpar myself, but maby Pcimage can shred some light of that one....
Have not used Ghost for years...I think it works better in a network, or for make an image distribute to several identical machines, and not for DR.

Regards/ Bosse

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Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

im suprise no other company has made a hardware cloaning machine like deepspar
for sure it looks good on paper
better then software cloaning

the thing that is worrying is that it only work with certain motherboards only

im very suprise that salvation data has not come up with a standalone box
for cloaning drives

Media Tools Professional data recovery is used by a lot of well know data recovery companys these days.

DeepSpar is certainly the best I have come across for cloning unstable drives. Highly configurable and extremely fast. Many useful features, such as live info regarding number of pics etc recovered, and visable mapping of good/bad sectors.

But, it is expensive

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

hi,
i think deepspar is a very good tool and a worth purchase, i know salvationdata is going to sell an imager unit, the "Data Compass " but i saw is "coming soon" on their site.
I'm trying to contact Laura but in these 2 days i can't deliver mails to them or contact via skype and in this very moment their website is offline.

_________________
Data Recovery pro in Italy
www.ultrarecovery.com

We use Acelab DataExtractor UDMA. That's useful, fast and flexible thing. I would say the user interface (especially English) is complicated and sometimes illogical but if you know all the features it is the best commercial copyr IMHO. Minuses of the product: price is high, support is not really friendly, English user interface translated poorly and you need to spend pretty long period of time to understand all the features (or you need somebody to teach)
We also tried DeepSpar - that thing is good but not flexible I personally would say it is not as good as DataExtractor
We are also looking forward to test new Atola product

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SAN, NAS, RAID, Server, and HDD Data Recovery.

hey doomer thanks for your options on what imaging software is good



allso to irs

the data compass is in the same lines as these other products
at the moment im waiting on a price it looks good

We have Deepspar, Data Extractor, and sometimes use mediatools. The best has got to be the deepspar, but personally I prefer to use the DE for my imaging

DeepSpar and Data Extractor. I find DeepSpar to be quicker if I have to image the whole drive, but if the client just wants a couple of files and the drive isnt too bad then the Data Extractor is a heck of a lot better because of being able to image by files.

Anyone look at ddrescu source code? customize? nice feature set...could make own tool easily. Embedded OS, etc.

I love ddrescue and I wrote up a huge article on it (not sure if I want to post it on this forum though as that would probably reduce our workload too much for the really easy stuff...), but... I ran into one problem with it while guiding someone over the phone. Wanted to save on shipping drives both ways and the customer had enough hardware to do a full-scale recovery remotely.

Anyway, the thing kernel panic'ed

I'll have the drive in my lab shortly so we'll see if it's just the client's flaky ATA controller or if it blows up on this particular failure. Ddrescue -n certainly clones most barely alive drives that I've tried nicely.

I am looking at acquiring an imager as the next logical step of the growing up process. The trouble is that no one seems to have reviewed all of them in one place and the marketing materials are inconclusive. I am thinking of trying DataCompass.

Just an update. It was indeed a messed up controller. The drive imaged fine through a USB interface on the same machine.

aticle about cloning tools: procedures-for-cloning-sata-and-pata-hard-drives-t7850.html

I'm still looking.
Can anyone reccomend something for Mac that skips bad sectors?

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new orleans computer repair

Hardware clone machines are just a pc in an enclosed box with software on eprom. Without good software they are nothing ?

If so it is the software that is the key to a good cloning tool.

.

With this in mind, have a test of the various cloning box softwares vs pc cloning softwares. In a dos or similar enviroment to judge which are the best. Then we would know the best cloning tools to buy.

hi BNICE, there is one more part to the success of the HW based solutions: how they manage the disk connection (not power, but data). Some IDE or SATA hosts are more tolerant than others. For example, i have many disks that I can clone with Atola Insight, but connecting straight to the serial ata ports of the hist machine, and running DOS apps, they won't work. The diff is therefore more than just the power switching part or the simple disk>host machine interface. I say good SW will do 90% of cloning jobs (fast or slow, but that is a different question) the other 10% need a good HW interface. my 5 cents.

The power switching and other power handling, does make for more chance of good clone, controlled via software.

The software that the hardware boxes have, will have been built on a pc. I'm still thinking what can be done in hardware can also be done on a pc. It is the job of the software team to make their softwares compatiable with motherboard and cpu. If this was coded, then there would be many good software cloning options.

Ok even if the eprom contents of each hardware was taken from eprom. Next would be getting that code into a DOS or other platform to run, no chance for many of us here. But there are some that are truly gifted in coding to do this, and reverse engineer for some tests.

Software cloning are now only built for a few motherboards in any cpu range. A hardware clone box software is custom bulit just for that box. If software cloners were coded for a much wider range of manufacturer motherboards. Although how easy would it be to code for one brand As an example Intel and cpu range of Pentium4.

Why would this be important.. Think more of advances, when they happen from user suggestions. Such as it could do with.. how about.. and for the developer new advanced features to implement. For a hardware box it would mostly mean buy the new model box to get the newer features. Not so with software, it can be upgraded with bug fixes or many new and major features.

This sollution could be caried through to many tools.

The key is to make the software work on more manufacture motherboard range and cpu range. Software i think should be the clear winner. For many it will be a box pc that the software will run on. Though even a laptop with a usb lead to ide and sata and power connectors, be used for the mobile diagnosis option.

In the end of the day as long as what we have in front of us does what we expect of it. And not cost another small foryune to buy the newest features. Which would not happen with software if it was good continously better than hardware. Further more it is impossible to jusge how good hardware is from a distance or what others say on boards like this. Even details that need to be seen are never shown on video, in full view for different drives. Software on the other hand, download it trial it, explore all its features with many drives. Like it, buy it, and use it instantly.