Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Hardware
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

For sale: Do-it-yourself hard drive rescue system

The System P. EX is slated for release next month

March 3, 2008 12:00 PM ET

TechWorld.com - Data rescue specialist Retrodata has announced what it claims is the first device for recovering damaged hard disk platters that can be used on-site by any company.

Called the System P. EX (for "platter extraction system"), the 165 lbs. device uses laser-guided positioning to help it accurately extract platters from any 3.5 inch hard drive with minimal user intervention. The unusual element is that such devices normally require highly skilled operators, whereas the System P. EX can be used by a relative novice.

The U.K. company won't release photographs of the product until it has been fully patented, but it did say that it would work on any drive with up to five platters, possibly more. It would also accommodate drives with internal shock-absorption damping of a type that might physically defeat rival systems.

"Only the largest of data recovery companies have tools available that even allow this process to take place," said Retrodata's Duncan Clarke, who also invented the machine.

The System P. EX is slated for release next month, at an approximate cost of $6,950 per unit. This includes a 10-year warranty excluding the cost of occasionally replacing precision components within the machine.

Asked whether hard disk recovery was really as critical as it once was, Clarke responded that the "age of ubiquitous backup" was a myth.

"Let me assure you that even multinational corporates are capable of either forgetting to back up, or their backups are corrupt. There would be no such thing as "data recovery if everyone backed up," he said.

"Some companies willingly pay [$20,000] to have critical data recovered; factor in emergency turnaround, and this figure can be doubled or trebled."

Last November, Retrodata made itself unpopular with Apple after publicizing an unusually large number of failures were encountered in Seagate 2.5-inch SATA drives found in laptops such as the MacBook or MacBook Pro.

"Apple is being utterly irresponsible and should launch a product recall," Clarke said at the time.


Reprinted with permission from

For more enterprise technology news from the U.K., please visit TechWorld.com. Copyright 2006 IDG, all rights reserved.

Jump to comments

System P. EX

Additional Resources

EFD vs. HDD - What You Need to Know
WHITE PAPER
Enterprise flash drives provide a new Tier 0 storage layer capable of delivering high I/O performance at a very low latency. Proper use of EFDs in an Oracle environment can deliver increased performance compared to fibre channel drives. Read the recommendations for identification of the best DB components for EFDs.
Gartner Research Report: Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers, 2009
WHITE PAPER
The market for products to improve the delivery of application software over networks remains dynamic and innovative. Vendors focused on solving enterprises' most-pressing application problems have become the top players.
Eight Criteria for Server Load Balancing
WHITE PAPER
Server load balancers are a simple yet highly effective means to scale an application environment while ensuring its availability. Today's solutions should also address application performance and security. Read about the top eight criteria you should consider when choosing a server load balancer and how Citrix NetScaler meets those requirements.

What People Are Saying

IT Jobs