I have DDI, DC, and DE pci, and have been doing recoveries for over 8 years.
In short, there is a reason to have each of these systems, as each one has been able to recover cases that others haven't. With experience using all 3, how I usually handle most cases is this:
1) Determine from customer the amount of data and priorities of data first. Some obviously don't really know, but many have a good idea of what they're after. For cases where the customer wants less than say 10gb of data, what I'll usually do is go to step 2 on DC. For cases where they have a very large amount of data (300gb of videos / music), I skip step 2 and go directly to DDI, since overall, it will be faster and safer. Oftentimes, a customer will say something like the quickbooks file is most important, but he'd really like his 100gb of music too. For these cases, I'll try to use DC or DE to recover just the quickbooks file, and after that's safe, I'll move to step 3) DDI
2) DC or DE pci (though lately it's usually on DC, since it's faster than the pci DE, though sometimes each of them can recover files the other cant)
On DC / DE: boot drive and pay close attention to how well it's performing.
Many drives won't boot, or will be too corrupt to browse and extract, and DC is not an available option.
Some drives boot, but are clearly very damaged-these are dealt with on a case by case basis--experience and guesswork are involved as to which method is better, (cloning on DDI vs. data extraction with DE or DC). I usually still try extraction first but will definitley stop after trying too long in fear of damaging the drive).
Usually, I only extract the most important files before moving to DDI...though this proves to be a waste of time sometimes since a good image is created, it's a worthwhile "insurance" step to try, because these days, a drive will often fail during the imaging process, no matter how sensitive you set your utility.
Sometimes if DC / Extraction is going well, I'll get everything that's important for sure, and don't bother imaging if I don't have a free DDI station...but I'll warn the customer not to RMA the bad drive until he's sure he has all he wants.
(note: I would not do the DC "full scan" option... the idea is to access the drive as little as possible.)
(note2: I definitely suggest monitoring the process. Sometimes drives will hang / lockup. Catching when this happens can be crucial (even if skip files with problems is selected).) If it locks, you want to be able to shut it down pronto.
3) DDI
When extraction via DE or DC is not an option, either due to too much data desired, or a drive being in too bad of condition, I will attempt imaging with DDI--which will often recover drives not recoverable by any other way (except other imagers, but DDI so far is the best I've found due to the ability to configure just about everything and adjust as needed, along with the power control (similar to pci DE but much faster overall)... I haven't tried the YEC ninja).
Even for cases on which I've recovered supposedly everything, I'll still often make a DDI image, just to be sure.
For many cases, DDI (or other full-drive cloning) is the only option. Again, I have not tried the Ninja, but compared to pci DE, and all different cloning software I've tried, DDI is the by far the best option.
On DC unit:I was hesitant to buy it, and upon receiving it at first, I thought it was junk. In fact, I made SD promise me I could send it back if I didn't like it...and I almost did. The reason for these thoughts were that I think SD misrepresented it as an imaging/cloning tool, for which it's definitely not as good as DDI. The cloning disk-disk speed (from my memory), about 40% slower than DDI for most drives. The reason for this is the USB bottleneck (and probably the Data Studio windows application overhead). How SD can claim that it's 30% faster that the the competition (unnamed DDI) at imaging and get away with it, I do not know, becuase it is DEFINITELY not, and instead is more than that much SLOWER than the DDI, not faster.
HOWEVER: I've grown to really appreciate the DC now, and can honestly say it's already paid for itself in just 3 months. The problem (which was stated earlier in this forum) is that, at least the early ads for the DC led one to believe things that simply weren't true about it's imaging ability, but neglected to focus on the real advantages it has, which is for extracting the most important files first. I have yet to use it successfully on booting a hitachi drive with firmware issues, perhaps because I don't really run into hitachi drives with firmware issues..not many anyway (does anyone?) I was really hoping it could revive some HTS541 drives once they stop detecting and start the garble sound, but it has not yet been able to, and is not expected to.
Again, others have mentioned that it is comparable to DE, not DDI, and I completely agree, though I'm pretty sure that the UDMA DE has a few major advantages over DC, since DE does head mapping, and I've been told the UDMA clones drives pretty quickly now. (I really wish I could test but the price currently does not permit). Also UDMA DE allows for HFS and Linux browsing (I've been told) and these would be definite advantages, though I have used DC on several occasions with rtools and winhex forensics to recover specific files from HFS partitions.
In short, the main reason to purchase DC is as another data extraction tool like DE, and not as a substitue to DDI. It has cloning abilities, but it's not fast or good enough at cloning in my opinion to be considered a 'professional tool' for cloning. But, If someone is just starting out in the business and has less than enough to get the pc3kudma+DE, DC would probably be the most useful tool overall for the price, unless the pc3kudma+DE can be purchased for less than in North America. Despite being a very good first tool and even one to use as complementary to the others, DC is definitely not an all-in-one pro-level solution. A better VS. option would be: is DC, HD doctor utils, and DDI (around $9000 total, right?) better than 1 pc3kudma plus DE for $12,000 usd? And how good is the Atola device going to get?
On DDI:DDI is an excellent tool at imaging drives. It's faster and more successful on bad sector drives than any other method I've used. Prior to DDI, I had some software utils that were pretty good, but would lock up and had to be monitored regularly on bad drives. It often involved recording the spot where the lockup occurred, resetting the system, and continuing on repeatedly, going back afterwards copying backwards to fill in the gaps. This took a ton of man-hours to monitor and record, and was a PITA. DDI eliminates the need to do this and handles power resets on it's own, and keeps records of exactly what's been recovered and what has not. Also, it has the option to fill all the unrecovered and skipped sectors on a destination drive, (automatically for sectors already attempted as it runs, or via a few clicks if the drive fails part way through the image) so you don't have wipe destination drives first or worry about other users' data being recovered again.
On pc3k + DE: I cannot comment on DE UDMA, but expect that overall, it's the best all-in-one unit now that it is high speed, based on acelab's history, and talking to other users about it. I just wish it was more affordable to North America.
The pci + DE is good, but is now outdated and not being updated. It does do headmapping for some drives. I have also been able to use DE to determine the amount of sectors per platter jump, and just manually set the jumps to that number, thus skipping the bad platter. DDI could probably do this too, though I think it's easier with the visuals that DE gives you.
Well, that was long-winded. Hopefully this helps someone, and doesn't confuse you more. I have no alliances to any one company, and look forward to any developments that improve our industry, especially when affordable
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