RapidSpar Demo Program

[Doc+Com]

I got my rapidspar demo unit last Tuesday and after some help from Vlad with a licensing issue, I put it to work on a 500GB WD Scorpio Blue drive from an HP laptop I took in last week. The customer brought it in with a blue screen occurring during the boot process and I pulled the drive to take an image and found that the drive wasn't recognized by my Linux box.
I plugged it into the rapidspar after following the simple instructions and within a few minutes, the unit was pulling an image...initially slowly but building speed through the process.
With the imaging finished, I moved over to the rapidspar client software where I then used Nebular to upload the specs of the drive and its symptoms for diagnosis. Then the magic occurs, I got a full file tree of the drive and was able to recover 11.8GB of pictures...which is what the customer wanted more than anything else on the drive. Start to finish, it probably took around 4 hours not including the saving of the data to a PC.
I know I didn't get all of the pics as a chose to 'skip bad sectors' but If I have time I may go back to this project and re-attempt the recovery using the 'Dig' option. This morning I moved on to another WD drive that I had made 2 attempts to image via Linux/software a few days ago, both attempts initiated and failed at the same spot and I stopped knowing that the rapidspar was on it way. This drive started imaging at 10.35am this morning and was at 46% when I left at 6.45pm. I'll follow up again tomorrow when I know the results of this recovery. Thanks Rapidspar for the change to demo this amazing tool!

 

[Vlad P]

I got my rapidspar demo unit last Tuesday and after some help from Vlad with a licensing issue, I put it to work on a 500GB WD Scorpio Blue drive from an HP laptop I took in last week. The customer brought it in with a blue screen occurring during the boot process and I pulled the drive to take an image and found that the drive wasn't recognized by my Linux box.
I plugged it into the rapidspar after following the simple instructions and within a few minutes, the unit was pulling an image...initially slowly but building speed through the process.
With the imaging finished, I moved over to the rapidspar client software where I then used Nebular to upload the specs of the drive and its symptoms for diagnosis. Then the magic occurs, I got a full file tree of the drive and was able to recover 11.8GB of pictures...which is what the customer wanted more than anything else on the drive. Start to finish, it probably took around 4 hours not including the saving of the data to a PC.
I know I didn't get all of the pics as a chose to 'skip bad sectors' but If I have time I may go back to this project and re-attempt the recovery using the 'Dig' option. This morning I moved on to another WD drive that I had made 2 attempts to image via Linux/software a few days ago, both attempts initiated and failed at the same spot and I stopped knowing that the rapidspar was on it way. This drive started imaging at 10.35am this morning and was at 46% when I left at 6.45pm. I'll follow up again tomorrow when I know the results of this recovery. Thanks Rapidspar for the change to demo this amazing tool!

Dot+Com,
Thank you for a great feedback. Stories like that help our engineering team to analyze your "real world" experience and come up with new features and technology that makes RapidSpar the best data recovery tool for IT service providers like you. Now you can help more customers, make more money and make data recovery as simple and efficient as possible. Keep your stories coming.

Vlad

 

[Doc+Com]

Well the second drive took a little more time to complete the image (finished around 11.30am today). I failed to mention that the software reported the drive to have 46% file availability and I really wasn't too hopeful of getting much back from this project. My client said he had music, a few pics but his main concern was a quikb==ks working file for his business. Remarkably enough I was able to get a full file tree of the client's profile and recover his file. This tool equates to digging for treasure but without the randomness.
I immediately moved on to a 3rd drive (Hitachi 320GB 2.5" from a Toshiba Satellite L655. This drive did spin up in the laptop and when connected to my Linux box but the drive type/size was not detected (weird). I connected this drive up to rapidspar and ran Nebular, the drive showed all good heads and I started imaging. It quickly got to 40% and then stopped. I left it for 2.5 hours before swapping the imaging from 'balanced' to skip 'bad sectors' as it hadn't moved a sector since then. Unfortunately, the results were the same with the imaging at a flatline and the almost exact point on the disk. I did a quick test to try imaging the drive without using nebular and I thought I'd cracked as it was really moving along but it stopped at 22%, again with a flatline and no sector advance for an hour.
I have one more drive that I'd like to run on Monday. I'd like to run it with rapidspar as a comparison to results achieved with R-studio and DDRescue that I previously ran on the same drive. The previous results achieved were pretty good (approx. 85% of over 200 pics) but I'm fairly confident that rapidspar could exceed this. Watch this space.

 

[MudRock]

This story of my drive #3 of the RapidSpar may scare the heck out of you guys a bit. Okay, a lot. (lcoughey, may want to avert your eyes.)

This is a story, of a drive. It's belongs to a client, but also a friend. They called me, in a panic, that their computer stopped booting once, went up again, but was making 'odd noises'. When I got it in, I saw it was a WD Blue, so I was expecting failed heads. I quickly booted it up to see if I could get a SMART read on it. It came up, quiet as a new drive. I was puzzled, because it promptly mounted like nothing was wrong.

I went for the SMART info, quickly to find a HUGE number of bad blocks, Weak sectors, reallocated sectors and so forth. I immediately shut it down. I discussed with the client the sounds they were hearing, but they struggled to explain the sounds. I wondered if the transportation to my shop jostled something loose, or back into place, or the extended period of time of it being off stopped the sound. Knowing WD Blue's head issue thanks to TN, I guessed that was the issue, but was still not totally sure.

I talked to the client about important data. Their pictures, they were missing some, but she stored all her old SD cards and had backups, so only cellular photos might be missing. Documents she was a little upset about, but invoices she had emailled, and she could just recreate her Excel workbooks. She was mostly concerned about a program, sort of like a scrapbooking program, that had working files for an entire baby book that she had months of work into. I discussed the option of sending it to lcoughey, but she felt it was just out of her realm, not even considering how long it would take her to remake the baby book. We discussed the RapidSpar, and the fact that depending on the sound she heard, may simply destroy the balance of her drive, or may successfully pull it back from the dead long enough to pull her workfiles. She agreed.

So I went hunting. After some support from the wonderful people with the RapidSpar, we managed to get the baby rolling. MFT gave LOADS of issues to get loaded, but still no sign of 'funny' sounds. Talking to Serge, we finally got a version of Assistant that'd load the MFT, and while it seemed to struggle, it did get the MFT.

As SOON as I started the recovery, a whine started eminating from the drive. I knew right away that the bearing/drive was going/gone or something along that lines. It started recovering files, but as the whine got louder, it slowed down further and further, to my first failed file. I tried to reposition it to see if I could get it any better.

PLEASE NOTE: Do not try anything I'm about to say on a drive unless #1: You're 100% sure the client will never want to try to go for a hardware recovery, ever. Even to this point, I was killing the drive. Make damned sure you have a signature or whatever, and #2: You're damned sure you're ready to stop the recovery dead in it's tracks. Hell, let's just say, DON'T DO IT.

So I tried to rotate the drive to see if I could appease it temporatily. Sometimes upside down from the position it was in the computer/laptop. Sometimes a different angle. But as soon as I placed it back down, sound stopped... For about 15s, and the recovery took off again!

... Okay, strange. 15s in, and the whine started back in slowly, slowing the recovery. It seemed to about to stop again, so I tried to move it down. I realized that the little bump of me putting it down, got it on its merry way again. Soooo.... Tap it every 15s. I was worried that even through this, I was still damaging data, but the RapidSpar came back as Integral on all but 2 files, the first failure and one in the middle.

I went back in, and tried for both files again once I was done tapping and getting the data. One still was failed, but the first one came through. I tried once more with Skip Bad Blocks. The file was bad, but the other was good! The bad file WAS just a small icon, so that's okay.

I managed to recover in this scenario. I don't think ddrescue would have gotten this far.

So tomorrow or Monday, I'll speak to the client, have her review the files and hopefully, most if not all of her project will be saved. 48GB of it!

Not proud, but damn, it worked.

Edit: A second pass was taken to grab their photos, documents, and a third to grab less essentials. All appear to be successful.

 

[Fixedathome.com]

I've just signed up for this. I'm no longer self employed but now work for my local university. We operate a Laptop Loan and Repair Service for our students and staff. Its a subsidised service with customers only paying for parts. Unfortunately the majority of the students we help seem to have no respect for their equipment we get a hell of a lot of failing drives through the door. I'd already made my superiors aware of RapidSpar and have been trying to collect data for jobs that we haven't been able to recover data from, but actually getting hands on use of one of the units would most likely help a great deal in persuading them that we need RapidSpar in our lives.

 

[lcoughey]

@MudRock Thanks for the warning and considerations. I agree that this type of determination is only good if you have already confirmed with your client that professional lab is out of the question. That said, it also shows the power of RapidSpar, saving you the $280 it would have cost you to have us do the recovery.

 

[MudRock]

@MudRock Thanks for the warning and considerations. I agree that this type of determination is only good if you have already confirmed with your client that professional lab is out of the question. That said, it also shows the power of RapidSpar, saving you the $280 it would have cost you to have us do the recovery.

Do you think this would have fallen under your minor repair option instead of major? Just trying to learn where you would classify these issues.

 

[lcoughey]

Do you think this would have fallen under your minor repair option instead of major? Just trying to learn where you would classify these issues.

If you can recover it without a head change, we certainly should be able to do so, as well. That said, the industry standard seems to quote up instead of quote down. So, it is likely that most other labs would charge considerably more.

 

[phaZed]

I had a chance to talk to Vlad today and the unit is coming my way. I'm excited to give this thing a whirl!

 

[Ken's PC Repair]

Just wanted to jump in quick with an update. We purchased a unit shortly after our demo ended. To date our recovery rate is just short of 80%. This does not include any drives that we determine to be beyond the ability of this unit. For example, if it clicks when we power it on we immediately disconnect it and refer the client to a data recovery lab.

 

[MudRock]

Just wanted to jump in quick with an update. We purchased a unit shortly after our demo ended. To date our recovery rate is just short of 80%. This does not include any drives that we determine to be beyond the ability of this unit. For example, if it clicks when we power it on we immediately disconnect it and refer the client to a data recovery lab.

I don't know if it's correct/polite to ask, but what do you charge for services rendered across this unit? I'm liking the unit, I just don't know if I'd get enough work to pay the unit off in a timely manner.

 

[phaZed]

I don't know if it's correct/polite to ask, but what do you charge for services rendered across this unit? I'm liking the unit, I just don't know if I'd get enough work to pay the unit off in a timely manner.

I have had my eye on recovery equipment forever, but never bit the bullet. I got real close with the DeepSpar unit a while back but at the (I think) $4000 price tag and the unforeseen effect of emerging SSD's, I decided against.

For half the price, albeit a different tool, I would expect it to pay you back within 10 HDD recoveries or less. I would suspect that a $300 recovery price tag, would be a good place to start. Seems to be a going rate of sorts...

 

[Ken's PC Repair]

I went with $300. I have found occasionally the recovery can take a long time and will probably increase the cost in those situations.

 

[Doc+Com]

Hi guys. I just wanted to give a final summary to my experience with the Rapidspar unit and so read on.
The unit itself is extremely compact and well packaged with a good array of adaptors to fit just about all scenarios you are going to find in the 'data recovery' world. I particularly liked that the setup is completely portable and there's no reason why recovery can't be carried out anywhere you have wall sockets and a PC. The set up for a recovery is real easy and the software is uncomplicated and robust. Running my first drive on the Rapidspar, I was a little apprehensive with using the imaging options and the whole process in general if I were to be honest, but by my 3rd recovery, I felt like I'd been using it for months. It really is very simple to operate and a great testament to the work of Vlad and the rest of the group at Deepspar.
One overriding benefit of using this device in comparison with all other methods I've tried is speed. I did have the opportunity to test recovery from a drive that I had previously recovery data from using Linux/software. My original recovery image took almost a full 17hrs to create and around another hour to pluck data from it, but the Rapidspar imaged the same drive in around 2.5hrs (with the help of Nebular) and recovered files were available in around 30mins.
I also tried another laptop hard drive that I could not detect in Wind-o's or Linux but the drive was seen and began imaging with Rapidspar.
Unfortunately, I was unable to do a real back-to-back test on a recovery which I had planned as a customer let me down at the last minute but by this time I already knew that Rapidspar is a tool I'd like to use in the future.
Noting that the Rapidspar unit is marketed as a data recovery unit 'for the masses' rather than the IT professional, (Vlad, please correct me if I'm wrong) I made notes of 2 things I'd like to see on a future revision to the unit. These are merely my observations;
1. The LCD on the unit is, well...small and understandably with the unit size, but I found my self using the screen more as I used the unit more and it became a strain on my ageing eyes. Maybe a VGA output socket (yes, it would make the unit larger but....) YMMV.
2. The USB cable connection on the unit reminded me a bit of the same connection on my Zalman....that failed! The cable never looked purposefully 'home' in it's socket, in fact when inserted into the Rapidspar, it appeared to be held off on one side by the SATA block connector. This may have been unique to this test unit. A nice snap/lock connector would be nice here.
Other than those minor personal issues I cannot fault the unit's functionality and purpose. Its a great tool to use and carry around and I feel would be a benefit to any shop/individual interested in taking data recovery seriously....and without the cost of a full professional unit. I would love to own one but personally the cost verses the amount of recovery I currently do is a limiting factor but I intend to market myself more in this area and if fruitful, I'd definitely buy.

Thanks again to Vlad, the Rapidspar team and Technibble for allowing Doc-Com to demo Rapidspar.

 

[Vlad P]

@Dot+Com thank you for your feedback and participation in our program. It was a pleasure to work with you.

 

[P-List]

I just wanted to give a heads up on what we've been working on. Since the start of this demo program we received a lot of requests for a feature to recover all used sectors on a drive. We just finished implementing it over the weekend. It's basically a single button in the Windows client software (RapidSpar Assistant) that will instruct RapidSpar to clone all sectors in use by the file system to the Target drive. It's a more efficient way to make bootable clones, since you won't have to spend time cloning empty sectors. The demo units now have access to the new software, so updating will add this capability. To execute it, right click on 'hard drive' on the left above found partitions and press on "recover used sectors."

We've also got a lot of feedback regarding RapidNebula that we will be implementing. Most of you wanted to see as many logs as possible, so we will be showing all successful tests in the log, rather than only showing problems that have come up. It will communicate whenever it completes any test, like:
Checking heads/media.... % health of each head
checking SMART subsystem... Ok/Failed
checking defect tables... Ok/Failed
checking translator... Ok/Failed
checking ROM... Ok/Failed
checking PCB processor.... Ok/Failed
and so on...

We received a lot of concerns from professional data recovery companies regarding situations where the drive might physically fail during the firmware repair process, which could create a difficult situation to recover from afterward. We decided to back up all firmware sections that we will be overwriting to the built-in SSD inside the RapidSpar device prior to making any changes. This way if there is an unexpected issue during the firmware repair process, these backups could be sent to a professional data recovery company together with the drive. They would then be able to use professional firmware repair tools like PC-3000 to return the drive to its original condition.

Unfortunately these expansions to RapidNebula are pushing back its release date by a few weeks. We were hoping to have the first release in the middle of May, but it looks like it'll be closer to the end of May or start of June.

We hear you on the small screen... Our original design had a screen that's more than twice as big as the current one. What happened was that the manufacturer of this screen found out they have a serious hardware fault just before we were going to start mass production and discontinued it. We are still pretty... unhappy... about it. We were in a position where we either had to switch screen manufacturers (after fully developing our hardware around this manufacturer), which would have meant adding several months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to the development cost, or we could stick with the same manufacturer and use one of their smaller screens. We chose the latter option to keep the price of the device to $2,000. We would not be able to afford to sell it for this price otherwise. We are strongly considering the option of displaying a copy of the RapidSpar screen within the Windows client software. This will most likely get implemented at some point, but we are not yet sure when. Getting RapidNebula up and running is our first priority at the moment.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Any further progress on the Dell controller issue?

 

[P-List]

We did a lot more testing and made some changes that improved compatibility with some systems, but some older branded computers have highly problematic USB3 controllers that we still don't know what to do with. Newer Dells work fine with the current firmware revision, but older ones do not. It's an issue with older revisions of their USB3 controllers. For example we recently bought two Dell laptops with identical models/specs for this testing; one of them was manufactured in early 2014, and the other in the middle of 2015. The 2015 model works flawlessly out the box, but the 2014 model does not work at all. This problem can be solved in desktop computers by using any general purpose PCIe USB3 controller ($20-$30), but it's more difficult for laptops. We did find out that using a powered USB3 hub solves the problem in many cases. We are currently doing a lot of testing on different hubs to learn more.

 

[MudRock]

We did a lot more testing and made some changes that improved compatibility with some systems, but some older branded computers have highly problematic USB3 controllers that we still don't know what to do with. Newer Dells work fine with the current firmware revision, but older ones do not. It's an issue with older revisions of their USB3 controllers. For example we recently bought two Dell laptops with identical models/specs for this testing; one of them was manufactured in early 2014, and the other in the middle of 2015. The 2015 model works flawlessly out the box, but the 2014 model does not work at all. This problem can be solved in desktop computers by using any general purpose PCIe USB3 controller ($20-$30), but it's more difficult for laptops. We did find out that using a powered USB3 hub solves the problem in many cases. We are currently doing a lot of testing on different hubs to learn more.

Very interesting that a powered USB3 hub fixes it; Does an unpowered USB3 hub do it too?

Have you tested the RapidSpar's power requirements, that it's peak draw is at or under 6 units/900mA? I know I've had experiences myself with earlier USB3 ports only providing 500mA power, or a few newer items, not quite 900mA. If you're pulling right to load, it could be the issue. May also test to see if the USB3 port on the computer/laptop is actually capable of pushing 900mA (or whatever the peak pull of the RapidSpar is) as well.

Edit: And that it's capable of maintaining stable voltage at max load.

 

[P-List]

The issue is related to a lower level of USB3.0 PHY signal generated by the USB3.0 controller. Also, the controller’s range of accepted signal-to-noise ratio for the input signal is not good enough and so communication between host and device depends a lot on the USB cable used.

Unpowered hubs work as well, but not as frequently as powered hubs. We ran into the power issue a while back after making the very first prototype of the RapidSpar device. We had to redesign our hardware after we found out how many laptops are not capable of providing sufficient power as required by USB3 standard. Our current hardware can get 100% of its power requirements from the power supply, so it does not need to draw anything from USB.