Data Recovery Solutions

[therealcrazy8]

On my site, still under construction, I have some options for backing up data, but none for recovery. Im not a fan of the chintzy programs that anyone can get to recover their photos. What are some of the "professional" solutions avail able for recovering lost data but wont cost thousands of dollars either. I'm not talking about taking drives to Kroll on Track but there must be something better and more effective than those other programs scattered all over the place? What do you guys use/recommend as your data recovery solution?

 

[lcoughey]

I created a few resources about data recovery. If you aren't able to spend the money on the right tools to do the job, you should probably consider outsourcing the work until you can.

What exactly do you want to be able to do in-house?

 

[Markverhyden]

Is this something you want to be able to offer or one of those "FAQ" blurbs?

There is are many posts about this, both in the {url=https://www.technibble.com/forums/resources/]Resources section[/url] as well as the regular forum.

Personally R-Tool's R-Studio is at the top of my list. But I also have Grenier's , Prosoft Engineering's DR4, and PartedMagic

Searching you can find other members' comments about other tools they have tried.

But most important. Make sure you have a good handle on what you choose to do. In spite of many EU's and their poor practices they really do value their stuff. And some are willing to spend some money on getting it back. So if you have a customer like that then it is best you just find a qualified DR lab. If the customer does not care, and you have that in writing, then feel free to play around, at your own risk of course.

Some observations.
1. drives making funny noises, clicking, grinding, spinning up and down, etc will not yield any data.
2. opening the drive to fiddle with it will make it fail if you are not using a clean space.
3. it's very time consuming.
4. It's a great way to learn about file systems and their structures as well as general OS operations.

 

[SAFCasper]

+1 for R-studio. I use this along with ddrescue quite often. You can't get much better without investing a few thousand into something like the DDI4

And as above - if the drive shows signs of physical damage we refer the client to a specialist.

 

[Larry Sabo]

The majority of problems that I see are caused by bad sectors or weak read/write heads and can be solved by cloning the drive using ddrescue (or a hardware imager) followed by R-Studio, or even just using Linux to copy the user data. But you can also kill a drive by trying that if the drive is really in a fragile state and you scan it to death. The most important thing to do, is properly diagnose the problem and then take appropriate action.

Diagnosing data recovery problems properly is very challenging and requires a lot of experience. Luke's guide on how to triage a hard drive is highly recommended. You could buy a RapidSpar as the next step if you get enough data recovery business but beyond that, you are talking major financial and time/training commitment, basically changing from a computer repair business to a data recovery business as your primary activity. There seems to be no middle ground.

 

[Vlad P]

Hello everyone.

We recently launched our RapidSpar (rapidspar.com) demo program. If you do occasional software data recoveries, this program is a great opportunity to test RapidSpar in your business and see if this could be the right fit. Currently opened for businesses located in US, UK, AU, Canada.

All details are here:
https://www.technibble.com/forums/threads/rapidspar-demo-program.68924/