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Total Recall releases Search & Rescue Mac 1.0

updated 05:40 pm EDT, Fri June 8, 2001

Total Recall Software has released Search & Rescue Mac 1.0, a $200 data recovery tool that can recover both HFS+ and Mac OS X HFS+ disks in OS 9; a native Mac OS X version is currently in development and will be released when finished.

Current users of Total Recall's MacMedic products will receive special pricing. If a user comes across a data loss situation that can not be recovered by Search & Rescue within 30 days of purchase, Total Recall will apply the purchase price towards professional data recovery services. A demo version of Search & Rescue Mac, which shows files that can be recovered by the software, is also available.

by MacNN Staff

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06/08, 06:17pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Correction

Search & Rescue does not repair disks, only recovers. But the demo shows what files the software can recover.

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06/08, 07:13pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Beware!

The correct name for this company is Total-Ripoff.

I was one of the hundreds of people who purchased their software three years ago at MacWorld. Their software did not work and they refused refunds to anyone who complained.

No working software was ever shipped to any of us.

I have a list of over forty people who were ripped off by them.

Light a cigar with your two hundred dollars, you at least will know what happened to it.

-- George Lawrence Storm
keencoyote@earthlink.net

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06/08, 09:54pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
e-commerce gone bad

so you need their product to save some lost files. you drop the $$$ on their site. your credit card gets charged- but get this...you can't download the software you've purchased for 4 days. what kind of "emergency service" is that?

these guys are scam artists. they're betting that by the time you can download their useless software you've had to go out and buy some else like norton to recover your files. that way you'll never learn they're app doesn't work.

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06/08, 11:22pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Don't Bother

I bought one of their products a couple of years ago based on their promise that it would be made HFS+ capable. I never used the product that I bought, when they finally came out with a HFS+ product, it was not an upgrade, but a totally different product at a very high price. They had no, repeat no upgrade path to the new product, except to pay full price. It was impossible to get to a manager to discuss it. In general a total rip off.

Dale Cunningham

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06/08, 11:56pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
rip off is accurate

How do they keep on coming up with new products. I got burned twice - not spending any more money here...

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06/09, 12:17am | report spam | close Reply | delete
STAY AWAY!!!

This company has ripped me off twice, and that's all - I am spreading the word - STAY AWAY unless you like getting screwed; trust me.

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06/09, 06:08am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Stay Away II

Once burned... this company is bad juju

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06/09, 09:06am | report spam | close Reply | delete
I don't see your prob.

I bought their software over the past 5 years and did have some problems early on, but they give away their Heat software for free, and there has always been an upgrade available, you can even upgrade from the 7 year old disk essentials to the newest version.

The company has made good on everything that I have bought. If the company made a version that didn't require a key, I'm sure you'd give it to all your friends.

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06/09, 09:27am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Total Recall

I disagree with these statements about their solutions. Data Recovery Toolkit did amazing work salvaging information quickly and painlessly from a dying hard drive for me many years back when I managed a network at a printing company. I also found MacMedic to be best of class in its ability to unerase and perform volume recovery. I did hit instances where it would not succeed, but such is life.

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06/09, 01:05pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Two Shills

Yes, I'd say that two shills (shill - Slang noun - One who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic gambler to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle)posted here in defense of this company. One poster (the first poster) simply offered a correction to MacNN's blurb. The other EIGHT posters spoke eloquently AGAINST this company. Who are you going to believe?

Not the shills, I would hope.

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06/09, 01:51pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Ripoff confirmed

Personally, the only experience I had with their last software was (a) sending them money, (b) not getting any product for over a month despite a promise of "overnight" - nearly every time I called, and (c) having their software crash my hard drive to the point where only one other program could recover it. So save your money for something that works.

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06/09, 09:22pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Once good, not anymore

A few years ago, our shop was using one of their software named Data Recovery Toolkit. It was a piece of gold. It was juste wonderful. It recovered files that Norton could not. But it only worked with SCSI drives and stopped working with HFS+ so we put it away.

When other softwares came from Total Recall, they were all piece of trash. Just c***. We felt ripped. What happened?

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06/10, 06:15pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Based on old experiences

It seems that you people are basing this stuff on old experiences. MacMedic HAS worked with HFS+ for at least 2-3 years. Norton had the same troubles, at the same time, trashed your hard drive, (remember Speed Disk?) it lost all the resouce forks to your files... whoops!

MacMedic has always been a good product for me. I mean really, this type of software is really difficult to write. I worked for a company that was trying to develop a new similar product and gave up.

As most of you know, if you make a purchase on the internet, and you have a problem, you can always refuse the charge. Then it's up to the company to prove that you didn't get it. I've seen these same people posting several complaints about this company all over the net, and I know it's the same 3 or 4 people. It's people like you that will make the Mac be gone and then you'll all be using gates-ware.

MacMedic, Tech Tool, and Norton will continue to be in my arsenal of repair & recovery options for years to come until something else comes out that's better. I just downloaded the new Search & Rescue demo and it seems pretty good. Make your own judgements about a company.

- Jake W.

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06/10, 06:37pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
bad PR

whoa. bad PR

whether the software works or not- who's going to buy it after reading this? if they're legit they should try and do some damage control.

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06/10, 11:42pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
I think I'm screwed...

I made the mistake of buying this company's software after being recommended by the manufacturer of a firewire drive that failed. After being treated like a child on the phone by tech support, the person on the line admitted that the software was based on old 68K code and although it should work maybe I should buy their new Search and Rescue as it looked like MacMedic Pro was not able to recover my data. I am in the process of attempting a refund...and received this email response:

We have reviewed your notes and it appears that the program worked as well as it could, that you simply had too much filesystem damage. Our 'no refunds' policy is in effect, and we will present them with your signed order acknowledging sucg. Your other option, in house data recovery, is still available to you.

I wish I had known more about this company and it's history before I made this mistake. Is this bait and switch? The testimonials that are at the website would have you think this is the only program on the planet that could save your data. Not!

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06/11, 12:23am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Huh?

From the product info page:
"You will need to install SAR on a working machine, setting up the problem drive as a slave/second drive on the machine and to recover data to a different volume. Recovered data cannot be written to the damaged drive."

So,
1) I can't just run it off the CD to recover data?
2) I have to have a computer with a working hard drive that I can connect the faulty one to?
3) If the faulty drive is internal, and it's the only one in the computer, I'll have to take it out and stick it in another before I can recover? Can this even be done with an iMac?

Bad history or no bad history... if I'm reading this correctly, this product is set up in such a useless way that I wouldn't want to buy it anyway.

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06/11, 08:47am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Number of Complaints?

Here is the BBB report word for word, I don't see any of this negativity anywhere, in fact they have a satisfactory record.

"BBB Customer Experience Record Based on BBB files, this company has a satisfactory record with the Bureau. Any complaints processed by the Bureau in its three-year reporting period have been resolved. The number and type of complaints are not unusual for a company in this industry. "

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06/11, 05:34pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
One of the best Mac...

Utility! I never got any problems with MacMedic this is one of best tool I used and I don't agree about a Total Rip Off, I talk about a Total Investment! Recover many files that Data Rescue can't recover. Really good utility. I'm sure Search and Rescue is better than there own utility,MacMedic, with all the features they mentions.

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06/11, 06:06pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Anything Relevant?

Hmmmm....has anyone here actually tried the new product? I don't think I've read a single statement that's actually truly relevant to the worth of Search & Rescue. Bad history -- fine, but I want to know something relevant to the worth of the new product. I've checked out the demo, and I think it's pretty cool, but I don't have a data recovery emergency. Is there anyone here who is interested in giving something more than just a juvenile flame that is not directly relevant to the capabilities of Search & Rescue?

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06/11, 06:55pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
AS SUGGESTED

AS SUGGESTED BY A POST, here we are (Total Recall) speaking up in our defense. Corporately, these posts are embarrasing, and personally they are ridiculous. I have never been to jail, ever, nor have I ripped ANYONE off, EVER. Whatever moron posted this (this person refuses to actually give his name or contact information, so I do not have the pleasure of contacting them directly) should be slapped. I encourage this person to take advantage of the post that recommends seeing me in person, please. With that aside, I admit that we have made our fair share of mistakes, but what utility company hasn't? Think about Norton or TechTool...perfect releases every time? I don't think so. They too, have had their fair share of bad software releases. As developers, we are left to creating software that deals with a multitude of hypothetical data loss and filesystem damage scenarios. We do the best we can with the resources and information given to us. This is sometimes scarce and try as we might, sometimes we do not get it right. We have tried very hard over the years to get things right. For example, we bought Teknosys, who went out of business and left thousands of users holding the bag on un-delivered software subscriptions. When we found out about this, we gave all of the people who contacted us the balance of their subscriptions due, which represented nearly $100,000 in lost revenue for us. When we found out that our first release of the utility software caused damage, we immediately sent out replacement disks to all users as well as performed data recovery for those that needed our help, which in turn cost us thousands of dollars. We have not been perfect, I am still human running an organization full of humans, which means that we react and make mistakes as humans do. We continue to do the best we can with the resources we have available. If it is not good enough, then fine. The perfect humans out there can continue to post garbage about me and my company, your creativity is impressive. Personally, I have had enough. How much does one person have to take? What is happening here is wrong, and I am certain that there will be even more abuse amd mockery in response to my post from those childish enough to continue. If you have been truly wronged, then instead of doing everything you can to 'do me in' (which clearly is not working, here I am), you should contact me. I will do everything I can to see that your wrong has been righted. For those of you that have made it this far into the posts, I am sorry that you have been exposed to the ugliness and hate of these people, I do not know if I can help them or not. Sometimes people are just mean and spiteful. Clearly we are dealing with a significant portion of that here. Thanks for hearing my 'two cents', and those interested in contacting me can do so at (719) 380-1616 x134...please no more garbage, just those that really want to work on a solution. I have been dumped on enough. -Kelly

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06/12, 01:26am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Blah de blah de blah

"Satisfactory" is not quite the superlative you seem to imagine it to be. Personally, I don't give second chances to businesses that rip me off, no matter how much they promise they'll never do it again. Mister Ike Turner ladies and gentlemen...

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06/12, 01:42am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Memories

Here's a list of people with similar comments, complete with unique email addresses. Surely not everyone of these people can be working together to fabricate these amazingly congruent experiences:

http://www.macfixit.com/diskrepair/mm.shtml

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06/12, 01:51am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Wow

Found a few more:

http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=9203&showRatings=

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06/12, 01:52am | report spam | close Reply | delete
IGNORE THE CEO!!

Trust me, and trust everyone else posting - Total Rescue is a Total Ripoff, and if the owner/moron wants a "second" (or should I say "third") chance to redeem himself after ripping off HUNDREDS of customers, then I sure hope there aren't idiots out there to fall prey.

STAY AWAY OR YOU'LL BE SORRY!!!!

Joseph Tirando

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06/12, 01:56am | report spam | close Reply | delete
I dare you to call him!

The CEO posted his number - go ahead and call him - and see how he treats you once you place your issues on the table. He'll probably ask where you live and then show up to beat you up. He is a mental case and beats people up - and if you think I'm kidding, meet him in person and say ANYTHING negative to him (that is true, of course). He'll probably try to kick your a**. Real nice guy.

Steve Williamson

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06/12, 01:58am | report spam | close Reply | delete
I tried it!!!

I downloaded it (after having to give them my info, of course - this is probably a marketing scam, but anyway) and after installing it on my machine, I launch it and it crashes with a -11 error. CRAPWARE!!!!!

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06/12, 08:21am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Everyone has problems

I'm reading the other problems about TechTool, and Norton that are linked at the bottom of the page of MacFixIt about MacMedic and there are tons of problems with those as well. Still these are problems that happened nearly three years ago, nothing is very current, so it must continue to be a pretty good product. Noone ever complains about software that works.

By reading every article on MacFixit, it seems everyone had problems with HFS+ when it came out and it took all these utility companies to figure it out. I've never come across perfect software. Look at Microsoft, they release patches daily.

I liked the message from the CEO, most companies would have their PR department issue a statement.

I've owned MacMedic Pro for about 6 months and have emailed the support from the website, and I found them to be very responsive and helpful, even giving me lots of suggestions to fix my problem.

I probably won't upgrade to Search & Rescue until I either have a problem with my computer, or until they support OS X.

What is kinda strange, is nobody supports OS X yet. I wonder why since it's been out for quite some time now.

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06/12, 10:42am | report spam | close Reply | delete
OSX Utility Support

The reason why OSX is not supported by *any* of the utilities is because Apple has not provided a public API that is capable of low-level disk arbitration to developers yet. As such, utility developers and anyone else that needs to control a device directly have their hands tied until Apple supplies a standard and safe method of doing so.

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06/12, 10:49am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: I tried it!!!!!

Heee he, he. A -11 error is a "disassembler installed" error. What you been tryin' to do there skippy....crack software?

Beyond that, anyone who downloaded the software and actually read the documentation (that's me) would notice that the product requires that CarbonLib 1.3.1 be installed. Do you?

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06/12, 12:42pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: I tried it!!!

I doubt he's tring to crack the software. You have to have OS 9.x installed. It also says that in the requirements! It runs sparatically on OS 8.6, even with the carbon 1.3.1 extension.

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06/12, 02:26pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Nothing Recovered

I also bought their new, wonderful sounding $150 disk recovery software at MacWorld several years ago. It was limited to only TEN USES, of which it never recovered anything usable. I didn't even get 10 uses,as it crashed about half the time, often just after incrementing the usage meter. I complained, and asked for the update to their newer product. I got a Total runaround and nothing more. Their product didn't perform, they didn't even try to take care of me as a customer, and that's it.
Hey "Total Recall": your customers haven't forgotten past abuses.

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06/12, 03:32pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Oh brother

It's probably just complaining that MacsBug is installed. Given the thousands upon thousands of companies out there that would just love to sit there and pour over the disassembly of a product that nobody cares about to ferret out all of its untold secrets, a wise security measure indeed.

Software quality nonwithstanding, none of the other utility manufacturers have managed to garner quite so many complaints about the level of abuse they expect their customers to endure. Yeah, data recovery's hard. Acting like something other than an indignant two year old isn't. Unless you're Kelly Leopard of course. He's never threatened to beat me up personally, but I wouldn't put it past him. Please do give him a call. You won't be interrupting anything more important than a multiplayer "Marathon" game. Listen carefully, and you can hear the explosions in the background.

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06/12, 09:38pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Kelly Leper

Go away - try the Windows platform - there's a billion people using that; I'll bet you could make a lot of money over there. Besides, Mac 'folk don't like getting beat up. And stop denying that you bully people around, because I know 2 people you've threatened.

Mr. X

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06/13, 12:09am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Man, how pathetic is this

Who cares what anyone here has to think. I mean really, I have never seen such a big bunch of pathetic and childish comments about what seems largely unfounded coming from what is supposed to be superior users on a superior platform. I guess not.

P.S. Come over to my house and I'll beat you up.

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06/13, 08:39am | report spam | close Reply | delete
"4 Stars" - Macnn.com

It looks like not everyone here is an idiot, macnn gave MacMedic 4 stars a couple years ago.

http://reviews.macnn.com/reviews/macmedic/macmedic.shtml

I guess we should start the I hate MacNN forum now, or better yet, let's just take them down, who wrote that review? let's go beat him up! Or better yet, why don't you all just go back to your room in your parents house and stop all that whining! Geesh what a bunch of pathetic losers everyone on this site is. I was thinking of advertising my product on this site, but not now, not with all the lame little childish punks that make up this and probably all the other mac communities. I don't even feel like developing software for the mac now.
This is the biggest joke of a mac community I've ever seen. People ranting and raving about someone who works for a company, which is probably just one person going on and on and on. Yesterday Adobe released PageMaker 7 and everyone just about crucified them. 63 stupid idiots posting about a product that Adobe decided to update. They didn't have too. And now they probably wish they just released something else for the windows platform. Of course you lamers would complain about that too.

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06/13, 03:04pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Sounds good to me

Whooooo... MacNN gave a good review of something. Was it chock full of spelling and grammar errors that most kindergarteners would be able to spot? Your post certainly was. I'm glad you don't feel like developing software for the Mac now.

"People should get beat up for statin' their beliefs"

-They Might Be Giants

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06/14, 01:23pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Total Ripoff is Right

Perhaps there would not be so many so-called childish posts if TOTAL RECALL indeed WAS a legitimate company.

The fact remains that their software is poorly written and the CEO is a total jerk that will insult you every time if you call with a problem.

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Total Recall releases Search & Rescue Mac 1.0

updated 05:40 pm EDT, Fri June 8, 2001

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Correction

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STAY AWAY!!!

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Total Recall

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Re: I tried it!!!

Nothing Recovered

Oh brother

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"4 Stars" - Macnn.com

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