April 30th, 2009 
atola insight 
Vitaliy Mokosiy 
no comments
We are glad to inform you about new exciting feature of the second version of DiskSense unit – DiskSense Ethernet. It solves the problem of speed limitation by USB 2.0 interface completely.
Steps to achieve a high speed of imaging
- If you have DiskSense Ethernet unit, you should attach one disk as source and another disk as destination to it.
- Run the latest version of Atola Insight.
- Click on Imaging and make a very short setup of your disk duplication process.
- Start imaging!
As a result you will see something like this:
In the current case we can see that data is being copied from SAMSUNG HD250HJ to WDC WD800AAJS-00PSA0 with overall speed of 47 MB/s.
November 10th, 2008 atola insight, data recovery Dmitry Postrigan 1 comment
Finally, after more than two years of development, we are releasing the first version of Atola Insight. I would like to thank all beta testers who provided their priceless feedback, it helped a lot!
The software is still far from being complete, and we are continuing our work on making it better. We plan to release new versions of Atola Insight every 2 to 4 weeks, so that all users enjoy new features as soon as we implement them.
Our plans for the upcoming releases:
- Better automatic diagnostics
- More disk imaging/duplication options
- Full firmware access for more hard drives
- Online firmware repositories
- Better file recovery engine
You can view full Atola Insight changelog at http://atola.com/products/insight/changelog.
We are also working on a new DiskSense unit that would not be affected by any speed limitations when performing disk imaging and duplication tasks (currently the transfer speed is limited by USB 2.0 interface). The unit is already in development and we expect it to be ready for shipping by May 2009.
September 18th, 2008 atola insight, data recovery, hard drives, usability Fedir Nepyivoda 2 comments
On September 15th, we have released a new version of Atola Insight Beta. I would like to elaborate on a new feature that we’ve added in this update. We call it Media Map.
Media Map
The process of copying data from the source drive is very important in data recovery. But reading every sector of the drive is not always needed and sometimes can be even harmful, especially when condition of the device is getting worse with the lapse of time.
Therefore, it is often reasonable to copy only the appropriate sectors – those which contain customer’s data and skip sectors which belong to the free space of the drive. Also it is often useful to manually specify regions which should or should not be copied.
To make this possible, we introduce media map – the tool which has flexible means specifying sectors to be read.
Filters
Media map is specified by a sequence of filters. Each filter can be used to include or exclude sectors from the map.
Currently the following filters are available:
- Partition table (MBR and EBR-s)
This filter contains sectors which make up a partition table: Master Boot Record and all Extended Boot Records.
- Occupied space of partition
Contains only sectors which belong to files on partition. Deleted files and free space are not included.
- All sectors of partition
Contains all sectors of the partition. This includes all deleted files and free space as well.
- Entire disk
Contains all sectors of the device.
- Custom range
Allows to specify custom sector range.
Example1
It is needed to duplicate a hard drive with two partitions on it with minimum number of read operations. We define the following media map:
(Include) Partition table (MBR and EBR-s)
(Include) Occupied space of partition0
(Include) Occupied space of partition1
By applying this map, only sectors which belong to existent files will be copied. All other sectors will be skipped.
Example2
We need to create an exact copy of source hard drive, but partition #2 does not contain any important data, so we’d like to skip the area that belongs to it. The following media map can be defined:
(Include) Entire disk
(Exclude) All sectors of partition2
Further development
Media map is a very flexible tool and we plan to evolve further. New filters which will allow copying by specific disk heads (or specific surfaces) are to be implemented.
If you’d like to provide feedback or have a technical question, please contact us.
September 3rd, 2008 atola insight Fedir Nepyivoda 2 comments
On September the 1st we’ve released the first update for the Atola Insight beta since releasing it to the public.
The update contains critical bugfixes, performance improvements, and new features.
Full changelog is available at:
http://atola.com/products/insight/changelog/
A lot of new stuff is on the way and will be included in the next releases.
Future releases
We have rethought our release strategy and from now on we’ll release new version every two weeks.
So the next one is planned to be on September 15th.
June 4th, 2008 atola insight Dmitry Postrigan 1 comment
We are finishing up the testing of our new Atola DiskSense unit; and we are also finishing up the Atola Insight software, meaning that we will be releasing our first public beta version on July 1st, 2008.
Initially, we’ve planned the beta for May 2008. However, at some point we realized that the Atola Insight beta could be MUCH better if we finish up two major tasks:
1) Release completely new DiskSense units (with internal power supply and a SATA I/II port).
2) Finish up some key features in Atola Insight (automatic diagnostics, automatic password removal, automatic firmware recovery, and full firmware access for almost all hard drives).
This way the beta won’t be just a “preview” release, but a tool that’s really useful.
If you’d like to get your hands on the Atola Insight before everyone else, please contact Jesse Goldstein at jgoldstein@yec-usa.com for more information.
Wonder how the new Atola DiskSense looks like? Follow this link: http://atola.com/products/insight/disksense
