We don't think that comparison of tools given by the vendors vs competitors is a good business practice. However, since YEC compares DeepSpar Disk Imager (DDI) with their own products on their web-site (http://www.yec-usa.com/products/faqs/de ... aq.html#a4) stating that "the DeepSpar offers a few extra features for 2 or 3 times the price of the King Demi" (without mentioning exactly what features they are talking about), we would like to clarify here what some of those features are. Here is what they say on the web-site at the time of this post (just in case they change anything later):

First thing to mention is that the price difference is under 2 times and not "2 or 3".

Now, before going over the features we would like to say that to compare any imaging tools you have to go through the issues that need to be handled during a data recovery imaging process and then check how each tool addresses those issues. So, the following is based on the most critical issues of data recovery imaging.

1) The drive is degrading under intensive reading and may fail during the imaging process.
To address this issue the DDI identifies and skips problematic areas of the drive during an initial pass, while retrieving good areas only. As soon as the first pass is done you can take the image drive and check whether the files you are looking for belong to those retrieved areas (which is often the case and so there is no need to dig into skipped bad areas spending days in trying to recover sectors you don't need). If some user data is located in the skipped areas you can move the image drive back to imaging and execute extra passes that are geared to "more digging" imaging algorithms while retrieving only those sectors that were previously skipped. This is done automatically, since the DDI has a map of each sector status and so it knows exactly which sectors were read successfully, therefore it never tries to retrieve sectors that were copied before. This means that you can stop the imaging process at any time, modify the imaging parameters, and continue the imaging process. The Ninja doesn't have this capability, therefore you have to manually instruct it what area needs to be imaged and it will read that entire area ignoring the fact that some of the sectors in this area were previously retrieved. An extra drawback of this approach is that if the drive degraded while imaging then previously retrieved sectors may be overwritten with corrupted data.

2) Imaging can take a long time and results are unknown until it’s done. You may be spending days or even weeks imaging the drive and at the end of this process you may realize that no useful data has been imaged, e.g. most of retrieved sectors have corrupted data or no data at all.
The DDI is a visual, fully interactive imaging environment. You see exactly what's happening during the imaging process: what type of sector errors you get, how long it takes to read any block/sector, whether a sector layout has any patterns which help identify the physical nature of issues, such as media scratches, and more. You also see exactly what kind of data is being imaged by: 1) viewing retrieved hex data on-the-fly, which can be used to identify unused space (zero values), and 2) watching for real time counters of imaged files of known types (such as pictures or Microsoft Office files) and file system elements (such as MBR, Boot Sectors and MFT records/indexes). So, you have a very clear idea of the imaging process, which gives you ability to control imaging on-the-fly. For example, you can jump over certain areas you are not interested in without stopping the imaging process or you can stop imaging, fine tune your imaging algorithm, and then continue. This is a completely different environment compared to the Ninja, which doesn't provide you with such details about the imaging process and so you can't control imaging the way you need to. This clearly results in longer imaging times and less data recovered.

3) Different drives have different read instability issues and so one imaging algorithm may work well on one drive, but fail on the other.
The DDI has not only various imaging parameters, i.e. read commands to use, sectors to process, data transfer mode to apply, Read Sector Timeout and such, but it also lets you create your own algorithm using Event-Action definitions. You can specify exactly how you want to process sectors with particular problems. For example, you may specify to skip bad sectors with IDNF or ABRT errors, but process sectors with UNC errors by a different command, e.g. Read Ignoring ECC (Read Long). Or you can instruct the DDI to reset the drive and jump over certain number of sectors if it gets a specified number of consecutive sectors with no data retrieved. By using such Event-Action definitions you can customize imaging algorithm as much as you need to handle particular problems of the drive so that you can get more data in less time. The Ninja does not let the user customize the imaging algorithm in such ways therefore you just have to rely on its hardcoded algorithm and hope for the best…

4) Different heads of the drive have different reading ability and some heads may even be so weak that they can't read most of the data from their disk platter.
The DDI has the functionality to test individual heads and to image data using specific heads so that you can identify which heads are weak and unselect them during an initial imaging pass. As soon as all sectors that belong to the good heads are copied, you can image data from weak heads. This lets you: 1) diagnose weak/failed heads, and 2) read all good data off the drive first so that it will not fail on you due to intensive reading process caused by accessing data on weak heads. The Ninja doesn't have heads related functionality.

And lastly, regarding the fact that the DDI requires a dedicated workstation. The only purpose of the PC is to make imaging process visual and interactive. You can not achieve this by using a dedicated device with a small display and a few buttons. Also, our DDI supply package now includes a motherboard and CPU. Considering the fact that the system is actually booting from the DDI, the only things you need to add to the workstation is a case, any DDR2 stick of RAM, PSU, keyboard, and an inexpensive monitor. In addition, each DDI package includes life time free software updates. Our clients who bought this product three years ago still have access to exactly the same features as anyone buying the unit nowadays and we didn’t charge a single cent for this, while YEC do charge their clients for updates that are released more than one year since the purchase.

Anyhow, without going into sales points, and just to summarize the technology - the DeepSpar Disk Imager is a visual, interactive, multi pass imaging environment with drive vendor specific capabilities, such as imaging by heads and disk preconfiguration, while the Ninja is a single pass dedicated imaging device with some embedded data recovery functions.

P.S. You can find more information about Data Recovery Disk Imaging issues and techniques in the following whitepaper: "Disk Imaging: A Vital Step in Data Recovery" (http://www.deepspar.com/pdf/DeepSparDis ... paper3.pdf).


Sincerely,
DeepSpar Data Recovery Systems

I would like to comment by saying that with the latest updates of the DeepSpar Disk Imagers, I've been able to do more tasks on those systems and freeing up my PC3000 systems for more intensive problems. The imagers have gone from a high end data recovery imaging tool to a data recovery diagnostic and imaging tool.

A couple of features that I use every day that I don't see on competing products:
- head map
- head & media test

To add to this even further, I rarely wait an hour for an e-mail response and almost always have someone on the phone when I call DeepSpar. Throw in their very interactive forum and you have awesome tech support that accompanies their great products.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

I must also agree, I have several DDI units and they're in use 24/7.

The head map feature is especially usefull, as I've come across many flakey drives that don't appear to like swapping heads when reading. By imaging one head at a time seems to put less stress on the drive, with good result......client data!

Shame this feature doesn't work on Samsung or Seagate...........yet (hint hint!)

Keep up the good work boys. Saving my pennies to buy another one or two units in the next few weeks.

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

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

Seagate is actually supported by the latest release (including all newer Seagate models, such as Barracuda 7200.11 and ES.2). You will need a third party RS-232 to TTL Converter though. Please check our forum.

Wow!! Now there's service!!

On my way to the forum now.

I must say your tech support is outstanding, Yareks a very helpful guy

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

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

Actually I start to lose trust in all this promotional information at all. YEC compares all their own products with the competitors, and I see the incorrect information in many topics. They even sent me some time ago a comparison table Atola versus competitors where they compared it with PC300 Yes, it was PC300 not PC-3000. Then comes comparison of YEC with Deepspar, now Deepspar compares their own product with Ninjia. IMHO, if each vendor compares their products in this way, it may be really misleading for the customers and they won't just believe that stuff

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This user was found to be affiliated with Ace Lab/PC-3000. See this topic for details.

This is why we were trying to be very specific about each particular feature while comparing the products rather then just stating that our product "offers a few extra features". We beleive that such detailed comparison will only help potential customers.

For example, if the DDI has ability to image by selective heads and the Ninja does not have this functionality. How such information can be misleading?

Anyhow, as we said above, we don't think that comparison of tools given by the vendors vs competitors is a good business practice... The only reason why we had to make this post is to answer the YEC statement.

Deepspar why not ask Dmitry (maysoft) owner of hddguru.com (this forum). For an hddguru.com DeepSpar forum topic, like [Ace, Salvation and Atola] have got here. Maybe YEC and other companies could do the same.

This is Jesse Goldstein from Ji2 Inc. (YEC and Atola vendor)...

I would just like to comment that we had no comparisons to Deepspar products posted on our website until we learned that Deepspar was reporting false information about our imagers to potential customers. If Deepspar hadn't reported false information to customers in the first place, we would have never bothered making that FAQ page... and now they complain that we responded to their slander.

We understand that the Deepspar is regarded as the strongest data recovery imager on the market and that's what we tell to customers because we are aware of the Deepspar's functionality (we did our homework). Is Deepspar aware of our products' functionality?

Note: The comment about the price being twice as much appears to be an error (will be corrected). I assume the info was copied from the Ninja product page FAQ... and the Ninja does sell for 1/2 the price of Deepspar.

Out of curiosity, how many data recovery labs use YEC tools for data recovery imaging of damaged hard drives? Outside of a possible speed boost, do the YEC imaging tools do anything more than software imaging tools (DDRescue, BB4 or X-Ways replica)?

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Jesse,
Would you please correct us if there is any false information provided in the above post in case we are not familiar with some of the functionality of your products.

Sincerely,
DeepSpar Data Recovery Systems