Certified Data Recovery Professional
I just attended a training by Infosec in Washington, D.C. The training was specifically on data recovery.
The first two days of the training focused on the physical function/ repair of hard drives. We learned about how the drive functions internally. We then began the hands on repair of the drives. We also learned to evaluate the sounds of a malfunctioning hard drive.
We then moved onto the various software tools that can be used to repair/ read the data that has been salvaged from a crashed drive. We performed multiple labs with the various pieces of software. We even did a few RAID repairs. Not surprisingly to me, or you if you have read my blog. X-ways Forensics was one of the most highly regarded tools.
The class ended with a sort of seminar on solid state drives. This provided alot of knowledge on how the dirves function internally. Without going into alot of technical detail, I can tell you what the opinion I came now. If you are going to use a solid state drive, beware of a failure. If a solid state drives fails, your data is basically gone. Data recovery on those drives, at least for now, is going to be very technical and expensive. if your data is retrievable at all, you better send it to a fleet of electrical engineers to get it back.
The class ended with an exam to be a Certified Data Recovery Professional. I passed the exam with a 96% !! I was happy. All my studying about drives and data recovery has paid off I guess.
The set of students in my class were a mix of military, IT network admins, forensic examiners, and data recovery business owners. It was an impressive crowd. I learned alot from the in and out of class discussions. Specifically, I learned some great info on the business of running a data recovery shop.
I am very excited to bring all of this information back to the Crystal River, Gainesville, Ocala, and Lake City area of North Florida.
I do have to warn other techs though…. I would think hard about wether to attend the course, unless Infosec reduces the price from the $3,200 to $3,800 dollar mark it is at now. There really wasn’t much in the way of material that you couldn’t learn yourself with diligent research and study. Then of course, working on hard drives and playing with software on your own. The class would be good though if you wanted to skip this study on your own, and just have the material given to you. The more you know about data recovery walking into the class… the less thrilled you will be with your money being gone.