“Proprietary” in the mind of a data recovery engineer is merely a name for something that doesn’t work with anything but devices and storage media manufactured by the same company. In other words, if it goes wrong, you often have a problem on your hands.
One fine example is the Pioneer DC-502A MO (magneto-optical) WORM (write-once-read-many) disc. These discs are widespread throughout UK hospitals for the storage of DICOM data (basically patient information, x-rays, etc). The trouble is, many of them still have patient data on these discs, but they do not have the means to read them, either. So they need to send the discs off to a data conversion specialist (such as Retrodata) who have the equipment and the ability to write software drivers to gain access to these legacy devices.
If for example you are offered an all-singing, all-dancing backup solution that uses proprietary media, has a proprietary method of writing and storing the data, run a mile. It may be fantastic while it works, but it could be catastrophic if it fails – especially if the manufacturer (sometimes deservedly so) has gone bust.
