Roger that, Alex! I have no skin in the game one way or the other (but am secretly rooting for ddrescue since it is the free (as in speech), open source option).

I want to thank Scott again for his honest assessment and suggestion regarding the earlier comparison between ddrescue and HSC in this thread.

Since I only have a week or so with the Rapidspar, I'll have to image all of the failing drives with it first, which may give it an unfair advantage. For purposes of the comparison, all 3 tools will have to complete the imaging process for a given drive in order to be included in the results. Again, not a perfect solution by any means, but it might be a fun experiment.

Many thanks for your feedback !

I will be looking forward for your testing and detailed description/comparison of the tools !!!

If you have a limited time with RapidSpar I would suggest you to image the drives that you can with it first, as mentioned and later on you can try the other tools that you have to compare.

Regards and let's see who will be the winner !!!

I think one of the most obvious advantages of RapidSpar over software imaging tools is the automatic ability to handle resets, as needed. I remember the days of using software cloning programs and having to constantly manually repower the system and restart the recovery process, making a recovery take days or weeks to complete that now only take hours with equipment like DeepSpar Disk Imager and RapidSpar.

Well, I do agree that RapidSpar most likely will be way better than any software only tool handling drive re-sets, mainly doing a power off/on if the drive gets stuck in BSY or stops responding.

The main issue(s) with RapidSpar might be the "lack" of the multi-pass (present on DDI4) that can translate in the inability to clone/image all of the good sectors if there are a "skip" set to jump over a number of sectors when some consecutive damaged sectors are found.

If RapidSpar can't "go back" to retrieve the data on a 2nd pass then we have 2 options, either staring by attempting to get all the data from all the sectors without skipping any (and risk to damage the heads by attempting multiple times to read bad blocks) or select the option to just skip some blocks of sectors if some number of consecutive sectors can't be read/are bad (and loose the data on the good sectors that are skipped).

I will be looking forward to read the review and experiences done by @tinyapps on this matter.

Regards !

With the default option, RapidSpar does do a 2 pass image, very similar to that of PC3000+DE. It reads forward in UDMA mode, hits a bad block, marks as yellow, goes back to the front of the block and re-reads in PIO mode (I believe), then continues on. You can see it in action in the video on their website, http://rapidspar.com/why.html

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

This might be "slower" than to just skip a bunch of blocks if some bad sectors are found consecutively.

RapidSpar should have 3 options for imaging :

1) skip bad blocks.
2) balanced.
3) dig bad blocks.

If you can use for example 1) to image the majority of the drive and when it finish you can use 3) or 2) on the same MAP/IMAGE then I guess you should be OK.

You should be able to start with one option and change it later. If you can't do that then it is a problem as you would have to chose at the beginning of the imaging process if you would want to optimize the image for speed or to retrieve as many data as possible. Choosing the last would potentially kill the heads of the drive on the attempt to dig bad blocks ...

At any rate I'm still looking forward to read how RapidSpar did compare to HDDSuperClone and ddrescue ...

Hello there !

First of all many thanks for your detailed test of RapidSpar against ddrescue/HDDSuperClone.

It looks like RapidSpar was able to do a better job than the software only tools and I guess that the capability to recover files and folders without having to image/clone the entire drive is very useful as well, and of course the same capability is present on any "decent" hardware based imaging/cloning tool.

It's interesting that ddrescue and HDDSuperClone did recover exactly the same number of directories and files but once again HDDSuperClone took more time to finish. Also the "Frequent loud clicking" while imaging is not something that I would consider to be a good sign ...

RapidSpar took less time to get more data. I didn't expect that RapidSpar would be able to get as many data as the other 2 tools as RapidSpar doesn't have multi-pass.

Looks like RapidSpar can be used with it's 3 cloning options on the same image so you can do a first image skipping bad blocks and then go back with option 3 and dig bads. This will cover all the drive.

I guess that you used the option 2 - Balanced - at least judging from the picture.

The fact that the drive didn't click while recovering the data with RapidSpar is a great sign as well but maybe that was caused by issuing some sort of Vendor Specific Commands like the Super-On.

Units like DDI4 can issue the Super-On VSC on IBM-Hitachi and Hitachi-ARM so that it will "help" with the Imaging/Cloning process. I remember reading somewhere that when a Hitachi-IBM is not detected properly by DDI one can still attempt to send the Super-On as a "last attempt" to get the drive to ID.

One interesting test would be for you to plug the Hitachi drive to an independent power supply and then run RapidSpar on it so that it would go to the RapidNebula to perform the firmware fix. Now without powering off the drive just remove the SATA connection to the RapidSpar unit and attempt to image/clone with either ddrescue and HDDSuperClone.

Do you have any change on the results ? Can you get more files after the firmware fix / optimization ? Does the drive still clicks ?

This way you would be sure that the fact that RapidSpar was able to retrieve more files was indeed because of it's cloning/imaging capabilities and not because it was able to issue something like some Vendor Specific Commands that were able to allow for the drive to work on another way that provided more data at the end.

This would be the same as attempting to image a WD or Seagate suffering from the slow issue / pending bug. Now you patch the firmware and you are able to image way faster and get more data. You didn't get to image faster because you changed tools but because you patch the firmware. Maybe something like that happen as well on Hitachi, who knows .... Only way to be certain is by testing.

But of course I might be completely wrong.

At any rate so far we have a winner. RapidSpar apparently beat ddrescue and HDDSuperClone ...

Now let's see how RapidSpar compares to other Hardware Based Solutions.

Once again many thanks for your review and this honest comparison.

Once again this thread shows the "superiority" of Hardware Based Cloning/Imaging tools against software only solutions, and let's not forget that RapidSpar is just way less powerful that DeepSpar professional solution DDI4. If RapidSpar was able to accomplish this results then one can imagine what a DDI4 unit would be able to make, unless of course the "key" for this success was in firmware patching via RapidNebula ...

Regards and keep on testing and sharing your findings !

Ok !!!

I will contact @Fraser Corrance now and see if there are any more details about the imaging comparison on my challenging contest and arrange to get the drives shipped back to me.

At least it's nice to know that you did made some proper testing with the RapidSpar unit and now we have some valid information regarding it's comparison with software only tools !!!

Regards.

I would like to point something out about what I see in the log files.

1) ddrescue log is not complete, still in scraping phase. So it cannot be accurately compared at this time.

2) HDDSuperclone - Finished (recovered sectors) = 976769975, bad (unrecovered sectors) = 3193

3) RapidSpar - Read Successfully : 976768368 Unread Sectors : 4800

Do some math on #2 and #3

This is starting to look very strange and inconclusive to say the least ......

- My "Spildit Image Challenge" might be over. My WD drive containing the image file done by HRT-DRE apparently is gone so there is no way to compare the RapidSpare image to it right now, unless I start the challenge all over again. So no conclusions with that test and I'm now waiting for the drives to return home.

- I didn't check @tinyapps logs.

- There is a chance that "RapidNebula" have done "something" to the drive. Even issuing the "Super On" can help out to clone/image some drives. Apparently Hitachi-IBM are one of those examples. DDI4 have the option to send the Super ON on those drives as well...

- RapidSpar apparently recovered MORE FILES but LESS SECTORS ?

And we have to make the question now ...

HOW WERE THE "Total recovered:" FILES COUNTED ?

HDDSuperClone - 976769975+3193=976773168
RapidSpar - 976768368+4800=976773168

So ... HDDSuperClone (and most likely ddrescue) did get MORE SECTORS but LESS FILES ?

The strange thing is that the image done by RapidSpar apparently can be directly plugged to the system and I works like the original one while the cloned drive by the other 2 tools will ... NOT WORK ??

Well, I did expect that HDDSuperClone/ddrescue would get MORE SECTORS because of the multi-pass. Even if sectors are skipped they can be re-attempted later.

Were the images used with the exact same logic data recovery software to extract/count files ?

Or were the RapidSpar file counting (recovered files) based on the files that RapidSpar Assistant itself recovered ?

This would be like using 2 different logic recovery software and there are no guarantees that one would not count more files then the other.

Also there is no way to know by the testing if those files that RapidSpar "recovered" are indeed in working condition and not damaged.

Ideally one would have to compare a RAW IMAGE of RapidSpar with a RAW IMAGE of something else and check with a hex editor exactly how many sectors are different from one image to the other and see what tool did get more data from the damaged sectors.

There aren't even the guarantee that the sectors counted as "good" are indeed good. One would need to compare images ...

At any rate it looks like ddrescue and HDDSuperClone didn't loose yet and I was wrong on my last post !!!

More testing is needed by people who actually have the tool and want to HONESTLY TEST IT !!!

Really .... Someone with RapidSpar and a damaged drive just have to take an image and compare the image with the one created by any other product/software !!!

What I find to me more strange/amusing is that there are people with multiple tools and none of them cared to check this out by creating images with the tools they have and compare one with the others ...

Ok, so we are back at square one.

RapidSpar is the apparent winner because the clones can be mounted on the MAC directly ... while ddrescue/HDDSuperClone clones can't ... despite the fact that they got more sectors out of the drive ???

Is there any chance that HDDSuperClone/ddrescue are retrieving damaged data from the drive and considering it as good ? Or counting good sectors just because it copied out something when in fact the data is not intact ?

Strange ...

I've got a drive here that I plan to test and will post about it on my company data recovery forum.

http://www.recoveryforce.com/forums/vie ... f=23&t=274

@tinyapps Many thanks for the clarification !!!! It's just that it looks like a little bit "odd" or strange that apparently by the logs the HDDsuperClone did get more sectors yet the RapidSpar clone does work directly on the system even if it have less sectors than HDDSuperClone ???

So either RapidSpar is not counting the sectors properly and is in fact retrieving more sectors that it shows or maybe RapidSpar did copy something out of those bad sectors that the other tools didn't ?

Maybe because the RapidNebula issued something like the Super On for Hitachi the data retrieved on the "problematic" sectors was not exactly the same as the data hat HDDSuperClone retrieved ?

Maybe HDDSuperClone counted "bad data" that was copied over as good sectors ...

Who knows ...

I will be looking forward to see some sort of image/clone comparing !!!

Many thanks once again for your review and time taken intro this test !!!