Here’s What You Should Know if You Are Shopping For Data Recovery

If you are reading this you might have found yourself in the position many home users or small business owners do – uncomfortable and having suffered a serious and unexpected data loss. Shopping for data recovery is bound to happen as traditional hard drives, Solid State Drives (SSD) or Flash memory all break down over time all on their own.

For data loss, we all want something easy, quick, and inexpensive. Unfortunately, data recovery is complex and exactly the opposite. If the data lost is a significant emotional value or business value and there is no way to recreate it, data recovery may be necessary. The question you have to ask is “does the value of your data justify the price of recovery?”

How Much Experience do they Have?

Find out how long each data recovery company you talk to has been around. I have been offering Data Recovery Services since 2003 for the Capital Region of Albany and Schenectady. I also receive cases from across the United States.

Are they Local?

I offer standard or emergency on-site or local pickup service in the Capital Region. You will be working with me. I offer service to the entire Capital Region (including Rotterdam, Niskayuna, Rexford, Scotia, Glenville, Clifton Park, Colonie, Latham, Cohoes, Menands, Troy, Rensselaer, Saratoga, and Malta). Also, I have provided service to northern New York (Plattsburgh, Glens Falls), western New York (Syracuse, Rochester). I have also helped customers in Vermont, Massachusetts, and southern New York (Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, Kingston, and NYC). In addition, I also offer computer repairs.

Access to the Engineer

From the start of the case to completion I give you status updates and you will have access to me. At larger companies, there is often no communication with the engineer working on your case. There are layers of marketing, call center employees, and supervisor that you will speak to, but no the actual person recovering your data.

 

How can you Compare the Costs of Different Companies?

It is essentially impossible for the following reasons:

• Any reputable and professional company will require a diagnostic to find what is wrong with a drive. The biggest determination of cost for service is what is wrong with a drive, the amount of time needed to recover the data, and if parts are required. The size of the drive is mostly irrelevant to cost.
• Many companies will state they offer recovery but do not. Many companies offer a data transfer. A data transfer occurs generally when a computer has stopped working but nothing is wrong with the hard drive (it has no software or hardware issues). A good example is a computer that has a failed motherboard, in that case, the hard drive would be removed and all data would be able be copied to an external hard drive at a fairly small cost.
• Many companies will look at a drive even though they do not offer data recovery services. This makes shopping for data recovery difficult and adds time to your endeavor, and sometimes will add cost if a company causes damage or runs a drive in a failed state.

Why is Data Recovery Complicated?

The truth is, data recovery can be costly and extremely complicated due to the way storage devices are designed, the way they operate, and the way they fail—either through physical damage or software/logical failure. Traditional hard drives, Solid State Drives (SSD) or Flash memory are not designed to be recovered or repaired. They are meant to be replaced when they fail.

Who to Trust?

A Google search for data recovery will return an astoundingly large number of options when it comes to data recovery. These options are not all equal. Many companies can not actually produce a great outcome when faced with a serious hard drive failure. Some focus only on software recoveries. Having the right mix of experience and expertise needed is key to diagnosing the cause of failure.

Cost vs. Free Evaluation

One of the biggest factors in shopping for data recovery is if a company charges an evaluation fee. Many companies do charge a diagnostic/evaluation fee. For a customer, the focus should be on the quality and completeness of the recovery and the total cost. I work on your case locally and generally only have a few cases or less at a time. A diagnostic allows me to tell you exactly what is wrong with your drive and the time and cost to recover.

Large companies often lure customers in with a free evaluation. However, the overall process of mailing it across the US ends up taking longer since you are waiting in the queue behind hundreds of drives. While the evaluation is often free the total cost ends up often being hundreds of dollars higher (in some cases even more than $1,000 more).

An interesting phenomenon I have seen is larger companies turning cases down. Often the cases they turn down are projects requiring one-off solutions or difficult case. I have had multiple customers contact me after a large company turns down customers because they are time-consuming complex cases and in the end, end up being not profitable.

What about Security?

How safe is your personal data with the data recovery provider? I offer a contract that covers if you want one or more copies of your data, and I retain nothing. I also offer the option to provide you with one or more copies or your data and then keep a copy of your data for 30 days.

With more, and more cases of data breach and identity theft, it is important to keep your business and personal information, taxes, credit cards, pictures, and documents secure.

Do they offer Backup Solutions?

I offer an onsite assessment for customers in the Capital Region for backup solutions. This helps me get a look at your computers, setup, what type of data, and how much data you have. I can then make some recommendations and help you implement one or more backup solutions.

Who to choose?

I offer the only full-service data recovery (physical recoveries, software recoveries, PC, Mac) in the Capital Region. If you need help with a data loss contact me at 518-723-0057. I provide service during or after business hours. After all, losing data doesn’t always happen during regular business hours.