Professional Hard Drive Recovery

In search of Hard Drive Recovery Professionals

With hard drive recovery, the saying "you get what you pay for" does not always apply. A firm with an outstanding site quoting you $3,500 for a hard drive restoration isn't immediately superior to a company that quotes you $1,500.

Keep away from companies that charge a fee for assessing your drive, numerous reputable data recovery businesses evaluate standard IDE drives no cost. The restoration market is approaching saturation, so offering free evaluations doesn't necessarily suggest a lack of expertise.

Getting a Quote for Hard Drive Restoration 

Searching around for hard drive recovery, you'll find prices varying greatly. Estimates for regular hard disk recoveries can easily range from a few hundred dollars to several thousand. You may be given individual estimates that have an up to $1, 500 high/low spread, often this is a 'bait and switch' tactic - these people bait you to send in the drive with the low-end price, then they switch to telling you it will cost close to the high end price for the recovery.

They believe in that many clients don't want the frustration of having the drive delivered back, and repeating the entire process of getting another company.

Try to get an up front cost for the logical or physical recovery, they should be able to give an indication of the cost of a recovery to within a few hundred dollars. They will often give individual costs for the two different procedures, one price for a logical failure and another price if the problem happens to be physical. This is different to the high/low 'bait and switch' described earlier, it is simply quoting two prices for the two kinds of recovery.

What are the Chances of a Successful Hard Drive Restoration?

Hard disk restoration professionals claim an average success rate in the region of 75-85%. Independently, there are times when your data is permanently lost. This can be for many reasons, too much physical trouble for the platters, computer data is written over, or it could be something as simple as unavailable substitute parts.

Getting Started with Your Hard Drive Retrieval

Once your hard drive crashes, pull the pc plug out of the socket - do not even shutdown! - and make contact with a hard drive recovery professional. Ask a lot of questions, and make sure you have the following information to hand:

The capacity of your drive.

The Operating-system you're using - Windows 98, Windows XP,Windows Vista, Mac Snow Leopard, etc.

Anything you were doing just before your drive ceased operating.

If your pc identifies the drive.

For those who have a standard IDE hard drive, make certain you do not pay an evaluation charge. A lot of companies only demand an assessment fee if they're handling a complex RAID or network server drive.

You'll find the most difficult will be finding a data recovery company with someone available to respond to the phones! Regardless of this, it is crucial that you do the legwork of calling and talking directly with the companies to find one which you feel the most more comfortable with.