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

Basically, case management allows tracking everything that is being done to a particular hard drive. I will give a couple real world examples:

More than one person works on a particular hard drive
When a company has more than one data recovery engineer, several people may work on a single hard drive. In this case keeping track on what has been already done to a hard drive as well as proper communication between engineers can become a real challenge.

One data recovery engineer works on several hard drives at a time
Obviously, there has to be a convenient way of keeping proper records for each hard drive. Also, since most recoveries take more than just a couple of hours, the process of making notes becomes even more important.

Atola Insight solves the above mentioned issues once and for all.

Proper Case Management

Everything you do in Atola Insight gets logged into the database. Diagnostic results, SMART data, firmware modifications, even spin-up power consumption graphs are saved. Every action taken by an engineer and its result goes into the database; custom notes are supported.

Later on, when a data recovery engineer returns to that drive, Atola Insight automatically loads up the history and displays it on the main form of the application (dashboard). Database can be shared between numerous Atola Insight users; dedicated database server configuration is also supported.

Case Management finally allows data recovery engineers to concentrate on data recoveries instead of making notes.

I completely realize the importance of this question, but unfortunately, there is no simple answer. When we were designing Atola Insight, we’ve faced a dilemma: whether we add support for new hard drives on a per-model basis or use a different approach. We have chosen a different approach, and I will try to explain what it is.

Per-model basis means that we start working on new hard drive models as soon as we have them in our lab, which means that there is always 3-12 months delay before the software can work with these hard drives. In other words, we would be always 3-12 months “behind” the hard drive market. Maintaining the software this way is good for marketing reasons, it also simplifies research and development to a degree.

In Atola Insight, we use a better approach. When implementing firmware recovery and password removal algorithms, we try to make them as universal and intellectual as reasonably possible, thus making them able to recover and unlock all hard drives, including those that did not come out yet.

How is that possible?

Hard drive manufacturers do not change their vendor-specific command sets and firmware structures too often. On average, major changes are made once per 3-5 years, and minor changes occur once per 1-2 years. It just does not make sense for HDD manufacturers to make major changes frequently (it is an expensive and in some sense dangerous process). This allows us to create algorithms that “adapt” themselves to new hard drives as they come out, without the need for us to make any changes to Atola Insight. So, instead of “adding” new model numbers every now and then, we will be spending that precious time on improving a lot of other important things.

What does all this mean to the happy Atola Insight users? It means that Atola Insight supports all hard drives made within the last 5 years with exception of certain models. Basically, we will be publishing “unsupported yet” models rather than “supported models” (and that “unsupported yet” list will be very short). Also, in most cases, “Unsupported” hard drives can still be diagnosed and imaged with Atola Insight, so it won’t be “totally useless” until we release an update. We believe that our customers will gain maximum benefits from this approach.

SCSI/SAS/Fiber Channel hard drives

At this moment we do not have any firm plan regarding these hard drives. When we finish up all IDE, SATA and SSD hard drives, then we will think about these.

It was pleasure to meet our potential customers on the show and at the seminar and I’d like to thank everyone who attended. I’ve learned a lot while listening to the feedback, and we have already made changes to our current road map according to the feedback.

Last couple of weeks my email was literally flooded with questions and now I’d like to provide the answers to the most frequent ones.

What is the price?
Preliminary price for the Atola Insight suite (includes Atola Insight software and Atola DiskSense UDMA USB 2.0 unit) is $5990. We still haven’t decided whether we will offer less expensive versions or not.

Release date
First official release is planned for the mid-April 2008. Shipping will begin in June 2008.

Where to buy
YEC International will distribute and support Atola Insight. YEC has a wide network of distributors and partners around the world.

I will now go through the most common questions:

Pricing: It will be a stand-alone product with a set price; no per-use charge as seen in Repair Station/HDD Unlock Wizard. Sorry, no prices are set so far. Preliminary pricing information can be expected in February 2008. Full roadmap (2-year development plan) will be released in March 2008.

Presentation at CES 2008: I will do my best to have it taped. If that doesn’t happen for any reason, then I will at least publish my powerpoint presentation (EDIT: see comments for the download link). Also, please note that http://atola.com always contains up-to-date information about the project.

Freeware: We really want to give something that can be useful for everyone. Initially we did plan to include all diagnostics features in the freeware version of Atola Insight, but now this seems somewhat shaky since most of the diagnostic stuff moved to the Atola DiskSense USB unit. We will be discussing this more with the developers to see what we can do. The same applies to the firmware diagnostics.

Supported drives and features: Automatic unlocking (ATA-password removal) will be available for all IDE and SATA hard drives (laptop and desktop) by May 2008. Everything else will be in the product roadmap which we will be releasing in March.

Manual firmware recovery: downloading firmware

This is an old-fashion way of accessing firmware files (modules): you can perform the recovery yourself. But wait, Atola Insight can do much more than that. It can automatically repair most kinds of firmware damage for you; all you have to do is to click a single button.

Automatic firmware recovery in progress

In automatic mode, the program first creates full firmware backup, diagnoses the problem, and then takes all necessary steps to recover the drive. Automatic mode saves tremendous amount of time since most firmware issues can be recovered automatically.

Project presentation at CES 2008 (January 7-10) in Las Vegas
Floor plan of the show | booth number: 73539 (Look for YEC booth and ask for Dmitry Postrigan) in the Sands Convention Center.

By the way, YEC also presents Shinobi, an HDD Unlocking tool powered by Atola Unlocker module. They also have all kinds of HDD duplicators. You have an opportunity to see all hi-tech HDD tools in one place, so do not miss the chance!

Current Monitor (click to see in full size)

The image above shows normal spin-up and initialization currents (5V and 12V) for a desktop hard drive.

The Fourth Element

Every data recovery specialist knows about the firmware recovery tools, disk duplication (or imaging) tools, and file recovery (data extraction) tools. But there is one more important thing that often gets overlooked: diagnostics. When a hard drive arrives to the lab, the very first thing a specialist has to do is to find out the current state of the hard drive. You cannot effectively repair a hard drive if you are not sure about what is the issue. If the diagnostics is not done properly, you risk doing more damage to the drive or rendering it irrecoverable.

I have never heard of a doctor beginning a surgery without having read the precise diagnosis first. The diagnostics is done earlier by people who had the knowledge and tools needed to perform such task. I do not see why this should be any different in the data recovery process, and I believe that currently the initial diagnostics is getting much less attention than it deserves.

There are some tools that help diagnosing surface and heads (for example MHDD); firmware can be diagnosed to some extent with the firmware recovery tools; electronics can be tested with a multimeter or oscilloscope. But there is no single tool that would allow to diagnose a hard drive and determine the exact issue.

Introducing Proper Diagnostics

For the last year we have been working on diagnostics algorithms that would allow to diagnose any hard drive and determine the exact issue, whether it is an electronic damage, mechanical damage, firmware damage, or a file system damage. We developed Atola DiskSense, a USB unit that works with IDE and SATA hard drives. One of the most important uses of Atola DiskSense is HDD diagnostics.

Atola Insight suite — diagnosing HDD circuit board

Atola DiskSense is a small silver box that attaches to any PC with a single USB cable. It contains:

• IDE/SATA interface that supports UDMA transfers
• 2 separate current monitors for 5V and 12V lines with short-circuit protection
• HDD power switch
• Emergency button that allows to stop the current operation immediately
• RS-232C (serial) port for Seagate hard drives
• Buzzer that informs when something is done or there is a critical error
• LEDs that indicate status (HDD power, IDE/SATA busy, Operation, Error)

Atola DiskSense unit — working prototype

Using Atola DiskSense you can get the most precise diagnostics results. Upon completion, Atola Insight suite reports the exact problem with the hard drive; it also suggests what steps have to be done to recover the drive.

Firmware

The biggest problem with the most firmware recovery tools is that all they do is just provide access to the hard drive’s firmware (modules, ROM, configuration NVRAM, etc); therefore the firmware recovery process looks more like using a disk editor to recover a file system. To recover something with such tools, you would either need to use a 500+ page manual, or you would have to be one of those who perform the research and development (in this case you don’t really need third-party tools since you can create the best tools by yourself).

Introducing Proper Firmware Recovery

In Atola Insight, the firmware (system area) recovery algorithms are automated to the maximum possible extent. The program automatically creates full backups of the hard drive’s firmware before any recovery attempt. All controls have clear descriptions, so that there is little or no need to use the manual. Of course, old-fashioned manual recovery is still available.

We will be revealing more information about Atola Insight soon.