I am looking for something that can mirror drives with many errors.

I need to be able to select the start and stop sector.
Forward or reverse selectable.
Can change the number of retries.
Can ignore some error types.
Can skip a selectable amount of sectors when error.
Can power off/on when readiness lost.

I have PC-3000 and I love “Data Extractor”
But I can’t tie up my machine for days at a time making mirror copies.
I do not have enough money to buy another machine, specially not 2 or 3 more machines.

I want to set up several computers that I can run problem drives on

Copyr HD Duplicator does all this. I got it for the same reasons as you. It was $400, but includes a license for up to 5 computers. There is hardware required to power down the drive. It's $100, but if you're cheap like me, the author includes schematic and code to make your own. It's real picky as to what hardware it will run on, but I keep hoping the next update will fix that.

Hi
I have seen product called HIE 200 , from BVG group russia. It has most of the functions (except power down )

http://www.bvg-group.ru/eng/diagnostic/HIE_200.phpThanks
Hddbug

I downloaded the demo of HD Duplicator from Copyr Soft.
http://www.copyrsoft.com/content/view/1/lang,en/
I tried to make a mirror of my bad drive.
I keep getting an error that I don't understand:
"IDNF can't found sectors with current address"
There are no instructions so I have no idea what to do.
I let it run for a few hours and shut it down with very little progress.
(Data extractor had little problems with this same drive)
The price has gone up to $450.00 USD plus $100.00 USD for power device = $550.00 USD for one unit.
The user interface looks like it was written in 1980

---------------------------------------------------------

That HIE 200 from BVG group Russia looks good.
http://www.bvg-group.ru/eng/diagnostic/HIE_200.php
I can't tell what functions it has because the user manual is written in Russian.
It is only: 9,300.00 RUB = $388.54 USD
I like it that it is a stand alone box and does not need a computer to run.
I would buy it if I knew for sure it had all the options I describe above.
Don't want to spend $388.54 and find out it locks up when it hit errors like most other programs do.

Getting a response from Copyr has been difficult. They seem to be on vacation 6 months of the year. To be fair, the demo is a year and a half old, and the full version comes with decent documentation. I haven't used it much yet, but when I do, it works well. I have a bunch of spare PC's, and I made up my own power controller, so the price made sense for me.

There's also the Salvation product. I think it power cycles as well. It might be better suited for you. I've also heard very bad things about BVG support.

I was able to get Copyr demo working on another computer.
It copied my 30GB drive with many errors in about four hours.
(Faster than most others I tried)
It seems run on one of my P4 computers but not the other.
Whats the difference?
I have a bunch of old P3 computers laying around.
None of them see drives over 132GB.
How do I know the software will run on them?
Will they see drives over 132GB on my P3 machines because it is direct access?
The demo is limited to copying 30GB drives.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I found another disk copy machine.
http://www.bvg-group.ru/eng/diagnostic/HRT_DRE.php
HRT DRE utility (Data Recovery Edition)
13,500.00 RUB = $563.817 USD

Interesting features

"The utility enables to copy only sectors chains concerning to files which you are interested in without accessing to other sections of bad HDD."

"It is possible to copy data on every head taken separately."

"The utility enables to take into account offset for data sectors because of translator destroying.

Dedicated hardware so no special motherboard required

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
DeepSpar has a copy thing but last time I checked it was $5,000 USD so we will not even look there.
http://www.deepspar.com/products-ds-disk-imager.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Salvation Data has "Power Data Extractor PRO" for $400 USD
http://www.salvationdata.com/productDetail.asp?pn=00005

The manual talks about being able to select start and stop range.

It says nothing about cycling the power but it does talk about their “fast extraction”

“fast extraction can easily skip bad sectors, therefore it works even when
there are numbers of bad sectors on your source HDD."

How does this work?

I had drives that were on the good side of marginal when I received them but slowly died after a few hours on my mirror copy machine. I often thought if I could limit each sector to say 50ms (If it does not get data in 50ms go to the next) I might end up with 90% of the data and not 10% of the data.

Salvation gives you a "key" with their software which means you can only use it on one computer.

The manual says nothing about being able to auto cycle power for "loss of readiness".

There are some wires that plug into the serial port but can't figure out what they do.

I also assume that it is very picky about what Motherboard you are using (like Copyr)

Does anybody out there have these copiers?
Any comments?

Well, it's expensive, but from what I can tell Deepspar it's really good!

Hi to all!!

She is always necessary one copies of 100% of hdd?

In the majority of the cases it decides with copies of 1%!

_________________
Нет ничего невозможного

It is!

But expensive!!

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

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

Yes I agree DeepSpar is the best but I can buy two of the other four products I have been talking about for the same price and have 8 machines extracting data vs. just one.

Anybody got English docs for this or knows what it can do?
http://www.bvg-group.ru/eng/diagnostic/HIE_200.php

Anybody know how this handles loss of readiness?
http://www.salvationdata.com/productDetail.asp?pn=00005

Some reviews I read on HRT say that you need a PhD in computer science to use this
http://www.bvg-group.ru/eng/diagnostic/HRT_DRE.php

Somebody out there must have bought one of these products.
Please give me a comment or review.
Thanks

I got the Salvation one free with a recent combo purchase. It is pretty basic and runs in dos. It only works on two of my five computers. It works on a really old 1GHZ and a newer dual core machine. Cant seem to figure out why it prefers those machines. It is a one click copy all program. I would rather it have more options. It gives no visual feedback as to what it is doing. The first error it encounters makes the dos sceen go all buggy with lines. It is hard to tell if the program froze or is still working. I have no way of setting a timeout, block size, head map, reset, skip sector event, reverse clone, so it can actually kill a drive before it finishes. Most of my images with bad sectors are made with DE. PDE Pro is just too unpredictable with errors. It is supper slow but can image the worst cases with ease. I only use the Salvation imager when I have a drive with no errors because it is extremelly fast. It is at least 25 to 50 times faster than DE. Hopefully in the future a program update will take it from a toy to a professional tool. But at this time I can not reccomend it over free and lower priced products on the market. If it was not free with a combo purchase I probably would have purchased COPYRDMA. I like and use all there other products. Sorry Salvationdata.

_________________
Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Forgot to mention: The wires coming out of the serial port dongle are used for Seagate models. The wiring on mine was of such poor quality it broke in half the second time I used it. It was made from a really poor quality ide cable. Since then I never use it. If you wanted to use it on multiple computers I guess you could unplug the dongle while its running and use it on a different computer. That is, if you have a spare computer that it likes.

_________________
Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Thanks for the review.

I contacted Salvation Data about what machines their program works on.
This is their response:

“The Power DATA recovery can't work at the following condition:
1.Brand PC
2.BIOS type: AMI BIOS / Phoenix BIOS
3.VIA chipset main board

We suggest you to use it on : Intel chipset build PC, 845/865/848 mainboard , Award BIOS”

They also said that if your drive looses readiness you have to power cycle you machine.

They kick PC3000 DE butt with the copy speed but lose the race because of no controls and no power cycle.

Again Salvation Data is so close to having a very powerful product and they fall flat on their faces.

I will try COPYRDMA next.

I just looked at COPYRDMA.
I think it is just another name for "Copyr HD Duplicator" which we talk about above.

I have no idea if the Copyr program works with drives loaded with errors.
They provide a demo and all controlls are locked.

I have a WD400EB.
Data Extractor gives me a "Sector was read with an ECC error" on every single sector.

Based on my calculations it will take 54days to copy this drive.

Is there any program other than Salvation Data's Power Data Extractor PRO or DeepSpar Disk Imager that will copy this drive faster?

Hi,

what's the point in copying an image when Every single sector is UNC?
BTW I suspect some FW problems there...
pepe

_________________
Adatmentés - Data recovery

Agree, waste of time copying this drive until the f/w problems are fixed.

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

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

I spent over six hours on this stupid drive trying to locate modules and trying to fix the firmware with both PC3000 and Salvation Data for WD. They both show modules 21,22,32 and 34 as bad. The problem is I can’t upload modules to this drive which I can’t understand. I will start another post to discuss this drive. It is a WD400EB-00JUF0. I do not want to sidetrack this discussion talking about my one stupid drive. I have many more drives that go to ready and also have tons of errors.

Now if I had a good copy program I would have only spent 5 minutes of my time hooking the drive to the machine vs. the six hours I already spent. The mirror copy is slow but it is giving good data on this drive, but I can't lock up my machine for 54 days on this one drive.

No way free with combo purchase that way i could get pc3k UDMA with Dvd writer purchase lol

Rameez:
Please, if you don't know what your talking about its best to keep quiet. The Salvationdata PDE Pro was free if you purchase two products during there Christmas special.

DRNJ: Did you try to relocate the modules to a different location in the SA? PC3K and Salvation have these features.

_________________
Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Hi dellguy,

I knew SD could do it(they call it module deflection), but how do you do it in PC3k? Also, from what I understand, it won't work if your unique critical modules are corrupt, only for remapping other modules that can be uploaded from equivalent drives.

Andy