Feature request

[-BR-]

Nice to know that ACE is looking into our suggestions. Thanks Roustam

1. Audible Alarm for Data Extractor.
Please tell, what operations should have Audible Alarm at their finish?
Please make me a list of them. I think "Partition analysis" should have it.

I think the ideal option would be to add and audible alarm tab page in options page, where the user can mark operations where he would like to rear audible alarms
My suggestions for some of this actions are:

** When HDD do not returns to ready state after XXXX seconds;
** When HDD has found XXXXX consecutive bad sectors;
** After Scan MFT is finished;
** After MFT Map is finished
** and basically after the last sector of current map of folder range is copied
(for example, when using head maps to copy before the good heads before the bad ones, used sectors map (bitmap), folder map of files, etc ...)

And if possible I have some other suggestions:

#Sugestion: More frequent task autosaves
Sometimes I run into PC3000 crash, mainly in the cases when a task take 2~3 days
most of times after this happen, when I try to re-open the task I have the unpleasant surprise to see that many of the already cloned sectors are now marked as unread again
So if it is possible, please tell the developer to add an autosave to the task, like 5 minutes for example
(maybe time for task autosave is another good suggestion for a configurable option in task options)

#Sugestion: Quick report on NTFS $MFT read sectors

For example a right click menu in [07] NTFS partition witch would bring a quick MFT sectors report showing something like that:
MFT table has 50.000 sectors
49.500 read sectors
100 skipped sectors
50 bad sectors
350 sector read with ecc error

So that user may quickly decide if he needs to spend more time working on cloning the MFT table or not

#Suggestion: Quicker filtered files copy in right click menu

Some cases you are working with HDD with has heads in process of beaking
For that cases, you would want to quickly save the most important files right away
Most users want to save files which can be quickly selected by their extensions
(for example, doc, xls, ppt, dbx, pst, jpg, zip, mdf, fdb ...)

But the problem is that the current filter option in DE UDMA uses an algorithm that start scanning all files in the partition first to make the filter
I've seen heads broke during this long process and none of the files was saved, so later head exchange was needed

The suggestion here would be that the utility save the selected filtered files at the same moment while it scans the folder, instead of only scanning the selected files for explorer like display and later saving .
Also, that the filter can be applied to a folder instead of the hole partition
For example, when you right click on a folder or root to have a right click option named like "copy filtered files only"

#Suggestion: Quick heads reading test
I think that to be able to do heads mapping is one of the most usefull features of DE UDMA!
A nice feature would be to add a function to quickly read, for example, like 10.000 sectors from each head to determine it's quality
And after bring a quick report windows like:
Quick heads test results:
Head0 - pass - 10.000 sucessfully read sectors
Head1 - pass - 10.000 sucessfully read sectors
Head2 - warning - 9.500 sucessfully read sectors and 500 bad sectors
Head3 - fail - 10.000 bad sectors
The number of sectors to read during this test can be determined by user in a popup windows box, whick can also give the option to select which heads to test

Thanks again Roustam and I hope my suggestions help ACE making a even better tool!

-BR-

[dobrevjetser]

Good suggestions.
I'm also glad Ace listens to its users

Dobre

[dobrevjetser]

Another feature that would be nice:

Say we cloned a drive with DE, than it would be nice to have a report that lists which files contain bad sectors, even before we save them to disk.
This could be done by comparing the MFT with the bad sector locations (obtained during the cloning process).
This would give us a very fast overview if critical files are damaged or not, without having to do the complete recovery and it would also lets us concentrate on the problem sectors.

What do you guys think about this ?

Dobre

[ZeBong]

Very Good Suggestions,

I agree also

At the moment dont have any suggestion for give but if appear one i will give it.

[-BR-]

Another suggestion idea:

What if apart from the audible message suggestion from Arthur, the utility also have the capability to send an e-mail message when some actions are complete?

One might think, what this has to do with data recovery?
Well, suppose you are in charge of more than one DE tasks running in different machines
One user would not be able to pay attention to both at the same time
Also, some cloning tasks can take hours (if not days), so I presume they won't be man-monitored all the times
(i.e.: you might leave the task running during the night or weekend)

It would be very good be to leave that huge 1TB drive saving data while you can work on other projects whithut having to monitor it all the time
and when the data copying is done the utility send you a notification e-mail ...

some suggestions for e-mailing options:
------------------------------------------------
when cloning of selected sector range is complete
when copying of selected folders is complete
when task is aborted because loss of readiness
when task reaches XXX bad or skipped sectors

-BR-

[steven]

How about Automatically turn off computer when ALL task already DONE.
this is a Greeen Solution to save POWER

[Pepe]

1. I have not found a way to check the space a folder and its subfolders occupy. It would be definitely useful.

2. When manual translator regeneration is checked, it would be very useful to have a complete list of files sorted by starting sector (not in hierarchical manner).
This way it would be more easy to find files with bad headers/shift points.

3. I could not understand why does the utility read up INDX records during MFT scanning. Seems to be completely useless, as the structure can be rebuilt based solely on the MFT records (as it was done in earlier versions prior to the recent updates).

pepe

[N.C.]

Hi,

I like the left-panel really, but it would be great to have a one click solution for head quick off/on instead of 1 click + move mouse + 1 click again.
Additionally the "recalibration" button shold be confirmed, because too close to the sleep and "disable lookahead" button, and a lot of cases causes the drive unworkable if one head is dead....

Regards,
Janos

[Nova]

Would love to see total file size selected before recovery process. Sometimes we dont need junk files and need to know the total files size.

[dobrevjetser]

I second that.
This feature would also be very usefull to help us select the appropriate target disk to store the data on.

Dobre

[N.C.]

I second that.
This feature would also be very usefull to help us select the appropriate target disk to store the data on.

Dobre

Yes, but this should be selectable ON/OFF.
Because travesing the FS sometimes dangerous on some hard cases.
And we don't want to kill the hdd only for some information about the files.

I am much more like if the DE can un-select the finished files from the list.

Janos

[Sales]

Thanks very much to all users who send us the wishes for Data Extractor. Our developers will work on them.

[N.C.]

I have one special wish, maybe someone have this too.

I have one project wich was imaged before in another program (example my program, wich is uncomon), and now i want to continue the project under DE.
(Similar case, if i deleted the project from DE before...)

This needs to re-build the project's map file from the destination drive.
I know, this is impossible to do precisely, but this would be really good, if the DE can read up the sectors from the destionation drive, and set to read(green) the blocks wich have other than 0x00.

Thanks,
Janos

[dobrevjetser]

Or blocks other than a certain predefined pattern. I always fill my drive with a pattern different from 0x00.
Or the ability to read the map from deepspar for example.
I know deepspar has a utility to create a UDMA map, but it would be nice to import this map from within DE, without using the deepspar utility.


Dobre

[N.C.]

I would like one select option in DE like this:

"What to do when finished:"
- Do nothing
- Poweroff actual drive
- Poweroff drives
- Poweroff drives and PC
- Poweroff drives and Sleep

This would be a safe and green solution in one.

By the way:
It would be great to have these options too for lost of readiness and reading errors:
[ ] (checkbox) poweroff drive and stop the imaging
[ ] stop the imaging (without poweroff the drive)

Janos