[REQUEST] Yet another Optane horror story

Metanis

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Location
Medford, WI, USA
TL:DR --->>> Anyone know of software that allows for reading Optane data pairs using disk caddies?

6 year old HP laptop with the customer's Quickbooks company file. Standard Optane setup, 16GB NVMe Optane SSD, 1TB spinning Toshiba 2.5" 5400rpm HDD.

The spinner is failing in such a way that it will not allow the machine to boot even to DVD or flash drives. Installing it in my bench machine causes the bench machine to be unable to boot if it's connected via SATA.

However, If both the HDD and Optane stick are installed in external USB caddies and using https://www.ufsexplorer.com/ufs-explorer-professional-recovery/ I can see the file system including the requested company file. The trial software reports there would be 1 data error in trying to copy that single 25MB file.

It's $630 to try for real with no guarantee of success. The customer is not tech savvy and so far my only progress report to him is that things are not looking promising for recovery. He does have a year-old backup copy and as a building contractor wouldn't have that many transactions to recreate to get current.

I'm inclined to just throw in the towel and tell him it's professional recovery situation or just give it up.

PS. Yes, I've tried to do a hardware clone of the failing Toshiba but even my cloning caddy won't do it. I've thought about trying a DDRescue clone but haven't wanted to subject the drive to that abuse at this stage.

I thought I'd ask if anyone knows of any other software solution that can read Optane pairs? It's like trying to read a RAID array without the raid controller. Windows by itself detects the drive as uninitialized or RAW and of course wants to format it. It needs that raid string identifier the Optane controller provides.

I've got about 6 hours into this project which I'll never get paid for, but I guess it's one of those learning curve things!
 
I thought I'd ask if anyone knows of any other software solution that can read Optane pairs?
Try R-Studio. I've never used R-Studio to read an Optane/HDD together but I know it can handle different drives in RAID arrays. The full software costs $900 but they also sell it in 90 day subscriptions for $80:


I would contact them and make sure the software has the functionality you're looking for before buying it.
 
At the minimum, the Toshiba has to be cloned properly. This way we can have a chance at working with proper partition tables and what not, allowing to virtually rebuild the file system with UFS.

You are in Massachusetts, right?
I could help if you are interested.
 
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