The following English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese software update is released:

• PC-3000 Flash software Ver. 7.3.7.

All authorized technical support users will get the latest software versions.

Please contact us to learn more on how to become an authorized technical support user and receive all of the recent PC-3000 Software Updates:

A SHORT LIST OF THE MAIN ENHANCEMENTS:

• Added resources of the complex ECC codes:
• Added the ability to put files with build errors or with ECC errors in a separate directory when saving files from folder structure.
• Added new Translator algorithm method “SanDisk 8 sec” which allows to significantly improve the resulting quality of recovery from UFD / SD / microSD cards based on SanDisk technology. It allows you to bypass the limitations of the classic Block Number:
  • Assemble images with the capacity of more than 32-64GB;
  • Use data from SLC cache;
  • Get complete folder structure including updates;
  • Recover video files from build translator image.

  This algorithm can reliably be used only in cases which require 8 sector size block building. In future updates more SanDisk CPU FW modifications will be added (MLC-memory cases, old cases with different SA location, etc).

• Added new Translator Algorithm for SM2704 controllers
• Added new Translator Algorithm for PS8036 controllers
• Added visual method for constructing the virtual image based on the file system, which allows you to manually select the most suitable candidates from the list of blocks. This image assembling algorithm might be very useful in cases when a translator is not available and SA area doesn't contain a marker for Block Number image building (modern SSS669x cases for example).
• Added new rereading algorithms:
  • Sandisk MLC Ver 1
  • Sandisk MLC Ver 2
  • Sandisk MLC 15nm

CHECK OUT ALL THE NEW FEATURES HERE.

For the third time in a row, ACE Lab became the partner of the Forensic Technology Day (FT-Day), the largest IT-forensics industry conference in Germany. The event hosted by our German partner mh SERVICE GmbH is growing every year – this time it was attended by more than 125 forensic investigators, cybercrime experts, and representatives of government agencies from Germany and neighboring countries.

The FT-Day’s participants had a lot of questions on how to deal with devices that are somehow damaged or have password protection to be bypassed. So, the turnout at our booth and sessions was just overwhelming!

During the event, we held a presentation on the Media Cache in modern Seagate SMR Hard Disk Drives and a series of live demos to showcase PC-3000 in action. The first day ended with a networking dinner where the attendees could exchange ideas on the newest developments in the digital forensics field.

On the second day, the conference guests were able to attend our workshop on top tips & tricks to recovering evidence from modern HDD and SSD. They were very impressed by the PC-3000 Portable III functions and received a valuable knowledge of forensics data recovery from password-protected HDD, HDD with damaged heads, Media Cache of Seagate SMR Drives, logically damaged ADATA SU800 SSD (by deactivating TRIM) and SanDisk Ultra II.

Do you want to see PC-3000 in action as well? Then follow our news and see you at the upcoming events!

As you already know, this year 2019 marks 25 years since the PC-3000 Technology has been developed. Previously, we have published the PC-3000 history through the ages, the story of how the PC-3000 Technology has changed the world of data recovery industry. But what about the idea of the PC-3000 creation and how it came to the bright minds of the PC-3000 inventors?

To get answers to these questions let’s look back at the memories of Vadim Morozov, ACE Lab CTO & Founder:

«By the summer of 1993, the production and sales of the PC-2000 testers for repairing MFM / RLL drives with ST506 / 412 interface were in full swing! But, at the same time, our potential customers received a smaller and smaller quantity of such drives. They were replaced by new 3.5" HDD with an IDE (ATA) interface and a capacity of 40 MB: ST157A (Seagate), WD93044A (Western Digital), etc.

We understood that hard disk drives were changing, so we started researching these new IDE (ATA) HDDs. And the first solution was the IDE extension cassette for the PC-2000 Tester. It was designed to connect, test, verify and format IDE drives, displaying the numbers of the cylinder and head on the seven-segmented indicator of the PC-2000 tester. And that’s it! The functionality of the IDE extension cassette ended there. At that time, we didn’t even imagine about the existence of the Technological Mode and the Service Area of the drives. So we tried to find analog service information on the negative IDE HDD cylinders in the same way as with ST506 / 412 drives.

In April 1994, the situation radically changed!

Andrey Tarakhtelyuk and I planned our traditional visit to the service centers of the computer assembly companies for demos and possible sales. But our solution for IDE drives did not make any impression because it was not able to at least somehow return the broken IDE drives to life. To deal with them, it was necessary to show a large amount of information such as ID, tables of found defects, list of given commands, status and error registers of the drive, etc. Of course, the seven-segmented indicator didn’t allow to display all these things.

During our journey, we also attended the Comtech-94 Expo on April 25-29, 1994. It was our first time participating in such an event and we were just amazed! Modern computers from around the world, the legendary NEXT computer by Steve Jobs, a lot of software, various graphical interfaces, storage media devices, laser readers, etc. We were impressed by what we saw and our heads were spinning from the information we received!

After the event, we have come to a conclusion — the PC-2000 time was over.

But what a new tester for IDE drives should look like? Should it be independent with its own display and keyboard or should we make it on the basis of a PC? The next question was how to display information about the HDD on a computer screen if we choose the second option? I was so excited from all the events of that day that I could not fall asleep for a long time, I was thinking about different ways of working with HDD, the circuitry of a new tester, the possible arrangement of information on the computer screen…

I do not know what it was, but that night the user interface of a new tester came to me in a dream. Yes, that's exactly how it was!

When I woke up in the morning, I delightedly told Andrey about it and drew what the new PC-3000 tester should look like. The device should have its own display, keyboard and LED indicators of HDD status and errors. To control the keyboard there should be an additional digital field of the common PC keyboard, duplicating, in fact, its graphic image on the screen! The only one question remained — who could create us such an interface?

I came up with an idea to involve our close friend Vital Pryadkin who was developing graphical interfaces for medical devices. After returning from the trip, I phoned Vital and we agreed to meet on the weekend of May 2, 1994. It was a sunny day, apricots were blooming everywhere, we were sitting on the bench and discussing the project that in the coming decades would become the ultimate standard of tools for HDD repair and data recovery!”