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Macworld 2011: DriveSavers talks about SSD recovery
I spoke with Chris Bross of DriveSavers about recovery of data from SSD (solid-state drive) storage at their booth. Currently, SSDs are in their third generation with reliability improving all the time. An SSD is comprised of two parts -- the NAND memory and the controller. The NAND is more or less a commodity, so the real work is done by the controller. Controllers are made by a handful of companies, and according to Chris, controllers have to get smarter. The MacBook Air uses Toshiba SSDs, which are considered in the market to be middle of the road -- consistent for Apple storage. A main difference between SSDs and hard drives are that before data can be written to an SSD, the block of NAND memory is erased, making data recovery of what was written before impossible. This is different from a hard drive where nothing gets erased if there is free space. Companies that use TRIM technology (like the SandForce driven Other World Computing SSDs) advance erase blocks, which makes them faster than others that do this just before they are written. The biggest challenge in recovering data from an SSD is encryption. Although all hard drive companies offer encryption, it's used by a minority of users, but SSDs are almost always encrypted. Outside of security issues, encryption helps SSDs balance data distribution. DriveSavers can recover data from SSDs due to physical failure, trauma or firmware corruption, but that's only half the problem. If they can't get past the encryption, there's little they can do to help. Fortunately, controller manufacturers are working in conjunction with DriveSavers on failure analysis engineering since it's in everyone's best interest to make data recovery feasible. DriveSavers has already been recovering data from SSDs for three years, and although they don't state success rates, they have recovered quite a bit of data. Chris tells me that SSDs have only achieved market saturation of two percent to date, but he expects that to increase to fifteen percent by 2015 as more computer manufacturers offer them and as prices continue to drop. When disaster occurs, DriveSavers is there to help, with pricing based on capacity. But according to Chris, and everyone else for that matter, the best advice is to back up. It's always better to be proactive than to need to rely on a reactive service like DriveSavers.
I have seen the future, and it's SSD
On the Macworld show floor, I didn't really see one specific product that blew me away. What I did see, however, is the next big concept that's going to not only blow all of us away, but it will change the way we relate to our computers. It's the SSD (solid state drive) and it's almost ready for prime time. As we've mentioned before, an SSD is a high performance storage device that has no moving parts. These drives can contain DRAM or EEPROM memory, a CPU, a memory board and a battery card (more details here). Having no moving parts, they can move data much quicker than an HDD (hard disk drive) which uses quickly spinning platters with magnetic surfaces. I got to play with what's being sold as the quickest SSD on the market, courtesy of Other World Computing. Their new Mercury Extreme Enterprise SSD drives start at US $229 for 50 GB and top out at 200 GB for $779.95. You can see our own Steve Sande in a video interview showing the boot time of this SSD vs. a stock 5400 rpm Apple drive. Watch for it at about 2:20 into the video. OWC set up a test of two Macbook Pros; I saw this demo myself and my jaw dropped as the SSD equipped laptop booted up and started running applications in 32 seconds. The HDD equipped Macbook Pro took at least three times as long to accomplish the same thing. The computing experience is one of perception. How fast or slow your computer seems is based on more than the CPU speed alone. It's a composite of I/O speed, CPU speed and dozens of other factors. If you have a screamingly fast CPU with a poky drive, you have a poky computer as the chain is only as good as its weakest link. I've found, on my i7 iMac, that no matter what I do, I usually can't use up all the CPU speed, so the slowness may be due to the HDD not being able to keep up. The current and future classes of SSDs are going to change all that. I can imagine sitting down, booting up and before I can lift my coffee cup, the computer has come up and is running startup programs. This will take some getting used to, since it will change my and everyone's work flow somewhat. Instead of all the little interruptions you get from waiting for something to happen, the response will be nearly instantaneous. This will tend to keep me more focused since I'm a procrastinator by nature, and get distracted quickly, like whenever I see a spinning beach ball. If a computer works as quickly as I feel it should work, I will be more engaged.
Macworld 2010: Get an education with the DriveSavers Hard Drive Disk-aster Simulator
DriveSavers has been the go-to company for data recovery since 1985, when I used to read about them in Apple ][ magazines. They have saved the bacon (and jobs) of many people over the ensuing years. When all else fails, DriveSavers can be counted on to retrieve your data -- whether it's on a hard drive, memory card, iPod, iPhone, or just about any type of storage media. It seems that their heart is in the right place; although seemingly not great for their business, they created the wonderful free DriveSavers Hard Drive Disk-aster Simulator app for the iPhone or iPod touch. The app teaches, in interactive fashion, how a hard disk works, and all the things that can crash a drive. It shows the inside of a hard disk where you can tap around to read descriptions of all the components. Next, using interactive animation, sound and vibration, you'll learn all the things that can crash a drive. You'll learn what happens during a clicker failure, seized motor, problems with spinning up and down, solid state drive failures (yes, they can fail too), contamination and head crashes. It's both entertaining and educational. There is also a section relating to protection strategies, which covers best practices, backup strategies, securing your data, and how serious a problem must be before you call DriveSavers. Knowledge is power, and I consider this critical information for any computer user. Another section shows you pictures of the clean room where all the data recovery gets done. DriveSavers employs the most advanced certified IS 5 (class 100) clean rooms in the industry and is authorized by all hard drive manufacturers to work on hard drives without voiding a warranty. If you don't have an iPhone or iPod touch, you can still learn everything in the app via a web-based Flash video. %Gallery-85751% We conducted an interview with Chris Bross from DriveSavers from the show floor. Chris talks about the philosophy behind DriveSavers. I found it interesting that there is a suicide prevention professional on staff to take call from clients on the verge of a nervous breakdown -- which is not an uncommon occurrence. Click on the Read More link to see the interview.
