Company in TX claims to have beat Sandforce Encryption

[Jared]

Stumbled upon this article claiming that Ace Data Group in Texas, USA has partnered with Sandforce to be able to recover data from their encrypted SSDs.

http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2015/02 ... based-ssds

I wonder if it's true or just some preemptive SPAM advertising hoping it'll come true.

:?:

 

[HaQue]

Interesting Jared, Thanks for posing. I take a bit of a hard line with these kinds of articles.
I could write some things but Ill just say that the article contradicts itself in places, makes comments about ssd's in general and some fairly opinionated claims, but no real info on this ZDATA thing. Googling for ZDATA system really only brings up this article.

Something to watch though

 

[w.simon]

I have some doubt already saw some articles about Ace Data Recovery, and they were looking more like advert / SEO things than real stuffs, but may be i m wrong !

 

[HaQue]

Personally I think the holy grail for Sandforce is a chip off solution. but what I think these guys are saying is their PCIe thing is accessing the SSD, so maybe they got the inside juice on some vendor terminal commands or something to bring back a bricked device, or unlock a locked one.

[Besides that, different manufacturers use different NAND flash memory chips to achieve their goals. Some of them, such as OCZ, tend to select higher speed and density over reliability. This is why the quality of their final products can become more unpredictable and a failure rate might be higher for some models of SSDs. However, since OCZ has recently been acquired by Toshiba, the quality of the storage devices manufactured under this brand is expected to improve.

Number one, don't use the word "might" this is a term that really pisses me off in a technical article. You can make up anything and put a might near it and no can really counter anything if it turns out different to the writers statement. If this is true, state some factual stats, or at least say that it is the word on the street..

Also very interesting they say about OCZ getting acquired by Toshiba... aside from the sheer guesswork, I am sceptical about any increase in quality.. anyone who has recovered SM3257 and EN's with the crappy WL chips will argue this point!!

Another reason this mention is interesting is them saying

As a result of our partnership with SandForce ..

considering no mention of Seagate, and the fact that you cannot partner with Sanforce, as they have been acquired by Seagate!! Why mention a different acquisition, but not the one that is arguably part of the basis of the story?? Oh, and Seagate have their own DR Service..

[SandForce offers well designed products, but even the best technology cannot entirely prevent data loss situations and guarantee users continuous access to their data.

Now lets totally make that statement sound stupid...

A relatively large number of requests for data recovery from failed SSDs based on SandForce CPUs forced ACE Data Recovery to conduct a research and find out the top causes of SSD failures.

I am a really great painter, apart from my really bad brush strokes..

Sorry for getting all ranty, but this story is plastered all over the interwebs and basically says not much, from a company that is partnering with someone that doesn't mention them at all on their website.

 

[Jared]

Maybe Ace Data Group will notice thus thread and come on here to defend themselves if its true. But I have my doubts.

 

[arvika]

I heard from one friend that it is just marketing stuff...

 

[lcoughey]

I've seen a lot of claims by ACE over the years...can't say that I believe them.

 

[Jared]

I just don't get why you'd want to advertise something you actually can't do. If Sandforce uses encryption no one has beaten, why would you even want those showing up.

 

[HaQue]

Thing is, what exactly are they advertising?

IMHO, they seem to be saying they have this in-house tool that has been redesigned to support something to do with Sandforce.. and that Sandforce somehow partnered or some made other such agreement.. maybe just signed an NDA for access to Datasheets like you have to for Micron/Spectek.. VERY convenient for it to be an in-house tool, no way to verify. It isn't like Sandforce (Seagate) would give them a way around the encryption.

Theoretically we could make the same article, and substitute VNR for the ZCOPY tool and Micron for Sandforce, as we probably have all signed an NDA for the company, and their insight/datasheets gives us info to read their NANDs.

Really though, this article wasn't written for us, but the consumer.

Jared.. If you charge a "to look at fee" then they absolutely would want those showing up. If they have a reflashing solution, or unbricking, then easy(relatively) money as well.

But if they have come up with something to solve a percentage more of cases and customers get their data back, more power to them and it is a positive step.

Really I think this is the first taste of what is coming, you can put a hell of a lot of shenanigans inside a single chip, and I bet there are some major challenges coming now that the Flash revolution has shifted into high gear.

a prediction for free - a massive increase in counterfeit/fake/mislabelled flash is on the way that will make the current ebay flash situation look like a country market stall.

 

[Sam]

So I'm about 1.5 years late to the thread but I do have some info about this.

About 9 months ago we got a SSD in with a Sandforce controller and were not able to get anywhere with it.
Got the suggestion to contact this company (ACE Data Group, LLC: datarecovery.net) from Serge at Deepspar. To avoid confusion, this company has no association with ACE Data Labs in Russia, who makes the PC3K.
Our client ended up sending it to them and after the recovery ACE Data Group sent us a check for $360 which was 10% of the recovery fee :shock:

Sam