Ideal amount of RAM for dedicated data recovery box

[occsean]

Hey all. I can't seem to find a definitive answer on if it makes sense to bump up to 16GB of ram on the box I use for running DDRescue off the PartedMagic CD. Box is running an I3-8100 on an MSI H310I Pro board with a 120GB M.2 SSD.

Any input is appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Alexey]

That depends on what tasks are you using it for. If you are limited to DDRescue, then 16GB is excessive. If you are doing large complicated stuff, like filesystems with tons of files, 16GB is worthwhile.

 

[labtech]

I agree. It really depends on how the machine it is utilized. DDRescue alone does not need much RAM.
Further more, for data recovery software, there are other implications regarding what kind of file system we are dealing with, size of data, need of scanning vs not, encryption, etc.
All these assuming scenarios where we are working with stable drives (e.g. clones/images).

 

[Diggs]

My ddrescue boxes run on 4 GB and I run Mint xfce with Conky on the desktop. I've never seen ddrescue even use 2 GB of the 4 GB installed on any job I have ever done. It's not a memory intensive operation at all. It's all about the IO so be sure you are using SATA 3 and eSATA docks.

 

[coffee]

Im not sure if USB3 support drive health monitoring (hdparm). eSATA does of course and that is one thing to consider.

My cloner box connects to my external 4 bay drive caddy via eSATA. That way I can check the health of the drive before I even decide to clone it. Also, My cloner box has about 4 gigs ram and a lowly dual core processor. No issues at all. Runs Linux Mint, Mate Desktop and I use it all the time.

 

[GTP]

I've only got 4Gb in my "Cloning Station." (AMD Athlon X2 3600, Gigabyte DX10 Mobo, 4 GB ram 1TB WD Blue HDD)
Never needed any more than that.

 

[Alexey]

In general, USB and data recovery don't mix well. If at all possible, use SATA when doing data recovery.

 

[GTP]

In general, USB and data recovery don't mix well. If at all possible, use SATA when doing data recovery.

I'm using an old tower, turned upside down (for access because its up against a filing cabinet) with several different cables for recovery from USB devices, Mobile Phones, HDD's, SSD's, IDE HDD's etc (Just finished recovering photo's, docs email from a 60GB IDE notebook drive.)
Works great but the cabling is a mess!

Had to turn the DVD RW and OS/Storage HDD upside down (to be right side up) as well.

 

[Altster]

Had to turn the DVD RW and OS/Storage HDD upside down (to be right side up) as well.

You have to stand on your head to use this setup? LOL

 

[Diggs]

You have to stand on your head to use this setup? LOL

No he doesn't! He's down-under remember. If computers come from the states they run them that way.

 

[DataMedics]

I keep a minimum of 32 GB in my data recovery station, and I've actually maxed that out at certain times. Most often, it's overkill. But, there's those occasional times where you try to open an HFS+ drive with over 4 million files in R-Studio and it'll suddenly eat up 20+Gb. If you have too little, you'll have random crashes when it gets full.

Ddrescue uses very little RAM, so I wouldn't worry much about that. I've run it plenty of times on computers with only 4Gb and didn't see any slowdowns. But, other programs can require a lot more.

 

[GTP]

If I come across anything more than simple images, clones or general data recovery, I'll ship it out to my recovery guy.
He gets paid for the headaches.
Customer data is too important to fool about with so I give it to the experts.

This setup works great for imaging/cloning and general data recovery though.

I even installed 1803..... Sshhhh!!!!

 

[TechPJC]

I've seen various RAM sizes...
* Minimum: 8 GB
* Usual: 16 or 32 GB
* Rare: 64 or 128 GB

 

[Altster]

If computers come from the states they run them that way.

Oh yeah, I forgot. HA HA HA HA HA

 

[sapphirescales]

How important is the data you're usually recovering and how much profit do you stand to lose if a recovery fails? How much is a stick of freaking RAM? Just max it out, for jabu's sake. Yes, you won't need much for most recoveries. But data recovery is EXTREMELY important as the data is IRREPLACEABLE (that's why they're PAYING you to recover the data!). I use high end i7 systems with 64GB of RAM. I wouldn't specifically choose a motherboard that supports 128GB of RAM just to get up to 128GB (as the motherboards/processors are quite a bit more expensive, and you don't NEED those faster processors for data recovery), but 64GB is more than enough. You do NOT want to run out of RAM during a big recovery job and be caught with your pants down. Sometimes you only get ONE SHOT at recovering the data. You don't want to lose your clients important information (and yourself good profit) because you decided to cheap out on your data recovery station.

Now I understand that not everyone has a budget for this. If you're just starting out and just scraping by, you can get away with 16GB if absolutely necessary. But I'd get that up to 32GB ASAP, and invest 100% of your recovery profits into getting a board that can support 64GB of RAM. A technician is only as good as his tools. If you don't reinvest back into your business, you'll lose money in the long run.

 

[GTP]

4 GB in my old AMD box with the DX 10 Mobo will do what I need. Don't need to waste money on stuff that would never be needed.

 

[sapphirescales]

4 GB in my old AMD box with the DX 10 Mobo will do what I need. Don't need to waste money on stuff that would never be needed.

Data backup and imaging/data recovery are totally different things. 4GB is plenty if all you're doing is transferring data from one drive to another. Heck, even 2GB would be fine.

 

[GTP]

Data backup and imaging/data recovery are totally different things.

Really? Thanks for the clarification.
I use it for data recovery as well. Although I only set it up a couple of weeks ago.
Done three recovery jobs so far no issues.
If I come across anything critical or outside my (limited) data recovery expertise it goes to the exerts as I stated earlier.

 

[Markverhyden]

Im not sure if USB3 support drive health monitoring (hdparm). eSATA does of course and that is one thing to consider.

Hardware bridges, like USB2SATA, rarely support the full command suite of the device being connected. Heck, they can even kill the device. One time I was doing some research on using hdparm commands to nuke a drive and came across posts about how using those commands across a USB2SATA will permanently brick a drive. Of course much depends on the bridge itself so I'd never do it over the bridge. So I use the native interface or nothing.