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Looking for Hard Drive Recovery Professionals

In hard drive recovery, the saying "you get what you pay for." does not always apply. A company with an impressive website quoting you $3, 500 for a hard drive recovery is not automatically better than a company that quotes you $1, 500.

Steer clear of companies that charge you for evaluating your drive, many reputable data recovery companies evaluate standard IDE drives free of charge. The recovery market is approaching saturation, so offering free evaluations does not necessarily indicate a lack of expertise.

Getting a Quote for Hard Drive Recovery

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

They trust that most customers don't want the aggravation of having the drive sent back, and repeating the whole process of finding another company.

Try to get an up front cost for either a logical or physical recovery, they should be able to give you an indication of the cost of a recovery to within a couple hundred dollars. They will often give separate prices for the two different procedures, one price for a logical failure and another price if the problem turns out to be physical. This is different to the high/low 'bait and switch' mentioned earlier, it is simply quoting two prices for the two types of recovery.

What are the Chances of a Successful Hard Drive Recovery?

Hard drive recovery professionals claim an average success rate in the region of 75-85%. Individually, there are times when your data is permanently lost. This can be for several reasons, excessive physical damage to the platters, your data has been written over, or it could be something as simple as unavailable replacement parts.

Getting Started with Your Hard Drive Recovery

When your hard drive crashes, pull the computer plug out of the socket - don't even shutdown! - and contact 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 are using - Windows 98, Windows XP, etc.

What you were doing just before your drive stopped working.

Whether your computer recognizes the drive.

If you have a standard IDE hard drive, make sure that you do not pay an evaluation fee. Most companies only charge an evaluation fee when they are dealing with a complex RAID or network server drive.

You may find the hardest part is actually finding a data recovery firm with someone available to answer the phones! Despite this, it is important to do the legwork of calling and talking directly with the companies to find one that you feel the most comfortable with.