Data Acquisition Add-on

The following video explains the functionality provided by this add-on and shows how it works on a few real cases.

The Data Acquisition Add-on is a firmware upgrade which adds three extra features:

Ability to recover data to an image file.

The standard RapidSpar device recovers data sector by sector, making an exact copy of the Source drive. With the Data Acquisition Add-on, recovered data can be optionally written to a raw DD image file on the Target drive.

A highly flexible new mode of operation in which RapidSpar acts as an advanced write blocker with on-the-fly imaging and data recovery capabilities.

In this mode the host computer is connected to RapidSpar over USB3, while RapidSpar has a direct SATA connection to Source and Target drives. The RapidSpar device employs a drive emulation system to present itself exactly as the original Source drive to the host computer. Here is how it works:

RapidSpar copies all identification parameters from the Source drive and uses them to identify itself to the host computer. This allows any third party software to work with RapidSpar as if it was a standard USB3 hard drive. Blocks of sectors requested by the host computer are recovered from the Source by RapidSpar, saved to the image file on the Target drive, and then sent to the host. Secondary host requests for previously imaged sectors will be automatically served by the Target drive, ensuring that we read each sector from the Source drive only once. Whenever the Source drive is idling, RapidSpar can use the time to fill in previously unread sectors to complete the image.

If the Source drive gets stuck processing a bad block of sectors, the RapidSpar device will:

Automatically reset and/or repower the drive as needed to minimize further degradation. Optionally retry the bad block one sector at a time to maximize data retrieval. Fill in any unreadable sectors with a user defined pattern to track corruption. Assemble the requested block using all available data and send it to the host as the response to the original block read request.

The host computer maintains a problem-free, uninterrupted connection to the emulated Source drive at all times, even while the real Source is being repowered! This ensures that the computer will never freeze, crash, restart, or drop the connection due to problems with the Source drive. Bad sector processing will be from 5 to 25+ times faster and safer in comparison with using software directly on the Source drive.

All of this functionality is provided entirely by the standalone RapidSpar device with no software or hardware requirements for the host computer.

Extra reporting that accounts for integrity of specific files.

RapidSpar maintains a live sector map within its project metadata saved on the built-in SSD inside the RapidSpar device. With the Data Acquisition Add-on, this sector map can be parsed to create a .csv file which shows a file listing with the exact number of good and bad sectors within each recovered file. This information is usually used to communicate the results of the recovery to the customer to increase transparency and prevent conflicts.