PARSEC Technical Information

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PARSEC Data Recovery Services
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PARSEC maintains a lab with classic Unix and OpenVMS systems. We have many hardware platforms in our lab.

**PARSEC Lab Hardware**
  * Multiple VAX and MicroVAX
  * Many Alpha servers and workstations
  * Many Itanium servers
  * Sun SPARC
  * Silicon Graphics (SGI) original MIPS hardware
  * Hewlett Packard PA-RISC
  * Hewlett Packard Itanium
  * IBM POWER Servers
  * IBM RS/6000 PowerPC Servers
  * Multiple routers, switches, SAN, and fiber optic hardware 
 
We curate many different OS disks on these systems using disks and disk images on hardware SCSI emulation boards. Some of the operating systems we maintain are:

  * Original and very old copies of DEC VMS
  * OpenVMS from the Compaq Era
  * OpenVMS from the HP and HPE era
  * OpenVMS layered products and software product libraries (compilers, etc..). Please note that we cannot provide or sell any of this software, but we can **use** it for data recovery purposes.
  * Digital OSF/1 version 3
  * Digital Unix 4.x versions including all letter revisions 'A' through 'G'
  * Hewlett Packard Tru64 Unix
  * IBM AIX versions 4.x through 7.x
  * Sun SunOS version 4.x
  * Sun Solaris 2.4 through Oracle Solaris 11. Also written as Solaris 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. Also known as SunOS 5.5 - 5.11 (uname versions).
  * Silicon Graphics IRIX versions 6.2 and 6.5 (all minor revisions of 6.5)
  * Solaris x86 (Sun or Oracle versions 2.6 - 11)
  * Hewlett Packard HP-UX versions 10 - 11 (all revisions including 11iv2, 11iv3, and both on PA-RISC or Itanium)
  * Some Legacy versions of HP-UX (9.x and spotty coverage of others)
  * SCO Unixware 2.x and version 7
  * A large number of Linux systems and filesystems including newer AdvFS for cross platform Tru64 recovery
  * FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD (all about 3-4 revisions back, also)

==== Supported Media ====

  * 50-pin SCSI2 drives and most other SCSI drives
  * SCA SCSI3 drives (these are the ones with data and power integrated in to one hotplug port)
  * LVD SCSI3 drives
  * DDS DAT 1 and 2
  * DDS DAT 2 and 3
  * DDS DAT320 and DAT160
  * DLT1
  * LTO2
  * LTO3
  * Disk images on CD, DVD, or USB disk
  * Almost any SCSI or USB tape drive you provide

==== How It's Done ====

We can use these systems to help customers recover their data who might have lost their OS, have damaged hardware (but working drives), or some other situation that might mean they can no longer access their data. These situations are handled by having the customer send us their NDA, if needed. Then we give them instructions on how to safely ship their drive to us (and we can provide packing materials, if needed). Once we receive it, we connect it to lab hardware and extract the filesystem from the drive usually with block-level techniques. We save the entire drive image then we use that image to attempt to recover the files, directories, and other metadata from the filesystem. We provide this data back to the customer on either DVD, tape, or USB media. We encrypt the data before we mail it back. Optionally, we can forgo that if the customer is willing to accept that risk. We usually charge a minimum consulting fee for service. Speak to a PARSEC salesperson for more info or use the information request form on the PARSEC [[https://www.parsec.com|home page]].