We prepared the interview with one of our customers David Foster, General Manager of Memofix. Memofix is a Canadian market leader in data recovery and hard disk repair.Please tell me about your company and your current role?
Memofix has been focused on computer storage devices since first being formed in 1986 to provide warranty service repairs for Seagate hard drives in Canada. So fixing hard drives really is in our blood. My role at Memofix is 100% centered around our data recovery services. I am tasked with developing our capabilities and processes, as well as managing our day to day operations. As a small company, my role touches on all aspects of the business.
What is the most challenging aspect of your work?
Managing customer expectations on both pricing and turnaround time is extremely challenging these days. Many clients find data recovery expensive and are shocked when the pricing quickly exceeds the value of their hard drive. The “no data, no charge” policies so prevalent in data recovery have to paid for by someone, and this tends to make the cost of a successful recovery high, or at least the perception. Additionally as the drives and the amount of data get larger and larger, the entire recovery process from imaging to data preparation is taking proportionally more time. Clients under the stress of data loss are not very patient.
How often do you use your Atola systems and how does it help you in your work? (please also indicate Atola systems used)
Our 3 Atolas are constantly busy. The two Insights are usually imaging error ridden drives where the process can take a few days to a few weeks. And we try and keep our Bandura open so it can be used for modifying a HPA, a quick diagnosis, or a fast image copy.
How often do you work with SSD disks, do our systems assist you with them?
We see 3 to 4 SSD’s per month. We often use the Atola for imaging them. One of the SSD manufacturers changes their SSD serial number to an error code if the device fails. We have also used our Atola to read this error code so we can further decipher the problem.
What are your recommendations regarding further improvements of your Atola systems?
I had some ideas for the Bandura but I guess I can keep those to myself. As for the Insights, they do pretty well everything I could want, without becoming a full scale system area analyzer/fix.
What would you most like to see changed or improved in the field of Data Recovery/Forensics?
There are a lot of unscrupulous data recovery businesses out there as it’s just too easy for anyone to create an impressive website and appear professional. Some sort of Technical and Business Practice accreditation would be great for the industry.
What kind of information would you find the most useful for your business that we could publish at the official Atola blog?
Perhaps some more in-depth articles on the inner workings of hard drives and SSDs. Maybe a forum for discussing problems and a little classified ad section for the data recovery industry with a “for sale” and “wanted to buy” section. Maybe Atola becomes the accreditor of data recovery businesses and you have a list of the good guys.
He believes in saving time & energy of people doing mission-critical work. Therefore, all his efforts are focused on leading R&D of innovative Atola products.
Gamification enthusiast. Agile development proponent.
- Atola TaskForce 2023.4.2 stability update - August 7, 2023
- Wipe multiple drives in Atola Insight Forensic 5.2 - May 26, 2022
- Logical imaging in TaskForce 2022.4 - April 11, 2022
Vitaliy Mokosiy
Atola CTO He believes in saving time & energy of people doing mission-critical work. Therefore, all his efforts are focused on leading R&D of innovative Atola products. Gamification enthusiast. Agile development proponent.
