Anyone ever tried Data Extractor RAID Edition?

[Jared]

Has anyone here ever tried the RAID edition of Data Extractor? I'd kind of forgotten that it even existed. Just curious how it compares with software like R-Studio for raid rebuilds, which is what I generally do now.

 

[hddguy]

Yes, and in my opinion its pretty useless...

auto-detect is poor, you really have to know the config before attempting to rebuild. Its more of a trial and error approach. When building RAID in XFS, XFS boot sector is usually sector 0 of the volume, but it doesnt access it because there is no MBR present pointing to it - pretty odd really.

I used it in the past for a few RAID0 that I did not fancy cloning first (I know cloning should always be done first...) but I rarely use it now for any RAID cases.

I can give you remote access to my system with a RAID0 member connected to each channel, if you ever wanted to check it out.

 

[Jared]

Thanks. I kind of expected that, but had hoped being from Ace it would be more impressive. I'm quite happy with how I do it now, just was curious.

How much extra did you pay for it?

 

[hddguy]

I dont remember exactly, somewhere around 2,000EUR I think?

 

[jol]

somewhere around 2,000EUR I think?

WOW, that means years will pass and will not cover the investment
because

in my opinion its pretty useless...

 

[Jared]

Hey, it's still better than the $6000 some of us threw away buying Salvation Data tools. At least with Ace you know that money went into R&D that later will benefit us.

 

[jol]

you're right i have no answer on this one

 

[Jared]

I guess the one feature I'd really like to have the RAID edition for is to be able to image by bitmap from a RAID member. Doesn't seem there's any way to accomplish that using other software combined with PC-3000.

 

[jol]

nop, PC3K (ace lab) doesn't allow anyone to access the drives connected to him

 

[acelab]

Hi guys,

auto-detect is poor, you really have to know the config before attempting to rebuild. Its more of a trial and error approach.

DE RAID Edition supports two types of auto-detection:
1) Auto-detection based on metadata.
2) Auto-detection based on user data.

If you have metadata and PC3K supports it the auto-detection can be done within a couple of seconds.
Using the 1st method depends on every case and sometimes it requires to use user data for auto-detection (2nd method).
If it doesn't help too you can build RAID array in interactive mode which is quite simple.

Please check these articles, it might be useful:
http://blog.acelaboratory.com/data-extr ... art-2.html
http://blog.acelaboratory.com/data-extr ... art-3.html

When building RAID in XFS, XFS boot sector is usually sector 0 of the volume, but it doesnt access it because there is no MBR present pointing to it - pretty odd really.

XFS Superblock should be defined in sector 0. If not it would be nice to check this case.