We’re ready to answer any of your questions about data recovery, however basic, advanced, specific, or general. Post a comment below to recommend an article or ask us a question and we’ll try to get you a quick answer.
3 Factors That Influence Data Recovery Costs
If you have a physically damaged hard drive, data recovery software will only make the problem worse. As we’ve explained in previous posts, your best bet is to use a professional data recovery service if you’re dealing with a physical hard drive issue.
Unfortunately, data recovery can be expensive. Here are a few factors that drive costs:
Hard drive type. Standard EIDE and SATA hard drives are the least expensive recoveries on average, as they’re the most common type of hard drive available. It’s easier to find parts for common hard drives and data recovery engineers will often have more experience with EIDE and SATA drives. SCSI and older IDE hard drives are generally harder to recover and cost more as a result.
Hard drive brand. Some brands are more common than others, and as different manufacturers use very different techniques to build hard drives, difficulty will also vary by brand and by model number.
In general, well-known hard drive brands like Western Digital and Seagate are the least expensive recoveries, but hard drives are far too complex for us to simply state that a certain manufacturer makes a better or worse product. Brand, however, is important and it can be a good idea to do a quick Internet search for your hard drive’s model number before calling data recovery companies to ask about prices.
Platter/head damage. Just as with any other IT job, difficulty is a major factor, and when a hard drive has taken an excessive amount of damage due to a head crash or another major physical problem, the data recovery will be more expensive. Limit the damage to your hard drive by turning it off as soon as you notice any of the signs of a physical hard drive failure.
Data recovery is expensive, but we’ve worked with dozens of providers and we can provide honest answers if you’re worried that you’re being ripped off. Post in our comments section if you have any pricing-related questions about your experience with a data recovery company and we’ll try to get to the root of the problem quickly.
Why Our List Of Recommended Companies Only Has A Few Names
We’ve gotten a few emails asking why we don’t recommend more data recovery companies. You might have noticed that we’ve only got two over there at the moment.
We’ve had personal experience with the listed companies, and while there are more than a few good companies out there, the data recovery industry also has a lot of less-than-helpful companies that don’t provide safe recovery services.
If you’ve had a positive or negative experience with a data recovery provider, help our readers know what to expect by posting a comment in the comments section below this article.
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4 Hard Drive Parts That Every Computer User Should Know
Most computer users don’t really know much about how hard drives work. When I did phone tech support for a data recovery company, we’d have plenty of customers who thought that a hard drive read information in essentially the same way as a record player plays music. They were surprised when we explained that the heads transmit a magnetic charge and never actually come into contact with the platters.
If that sounds Greek to you, you aren’t alone. However, while you don’t have to know all the technical stuff, it’s a good idea to know a few of the basic parts of an HD and how they function to read and write data. The info can be extremely useful when you’re talking with experts at a data recovery company.
The Heads -Every hard drive uses a set of read/write heads to access data. The heads are tiny and sit at the end of a large arm which goes all over the data-storing platters. However, they never actually come into contact with the platters, even though they’re less than a micron away.
The Platters - Platters store data. They’re usually made of metal or plastic with a sheet of magnetic material. The material stores charges, which can be read by the heads later.
The platters rotate under the heads at speeds of no less than 4800 RPM.
The Spindle – The spindle is what spins the platters under the heads. It’s made of metal and works mechanically, so eventually it will fail (this mechanical component of your hard drive is one of the biggest reasons to back up your data on a regular basis).
The Electronics Board - The PCB board of a hard drive interfaces with your computer and tells the heads where to go. Electronics boards are often unit-specific, so the PCB from one hard drive might not work in another hard drive.
This post might have seemed pretty basic, but it’s good to brush up on terms every once in a while. It’ll make it much easier to talk with a data recovery company or to learn when & why data recovery software works.
Testing Your Hard Drive
As a supplement to our post about data recovery software, here’s some extra info to consider if you’re thinking about trying a data recovery program.
As we’ve posted before, software can cause permanent damage by running a hard drive when the read/write heads are off track. When the heads actually damage the magnetic material that holds data, it’s gone forever. Data recovery companies can read around the damage, but there’s rarely anything to read, as many computer users try running data recovery software for hours and hours before calling a professional data recovery provider.
There are a few situations, however, where software can actually provide a relatively good chance of data recovery:
- When data has been deleted, data recovery software can often completely recover the lost information, especially on a Windows or Mac computer.
- When files are corrupted, a hard drive or other electronic device is usually on its way out. Data recovery software can sometimes save the corrupted data and restore it to a useable condition.
- When files have been deleted by a virus, there’s a very good chance of a complete recovery with data recovery software. However, the virus will need to be removed from the recovered materials, so when you’re sure that a virus deleted data, it’s probably a good idea to call the professionals.
There are a few symptoms that can indicate a physical failure:
- Any excessive noise coming from a hard drive usually means a failure, especially if there’s a clicking or grinding sound. If your hard drive’s making noises, turn it off immediately.
- Hard drives that take minutes to open a single file could have physical problems. Exercise extreme caution when using data recovery software.
- If a hard drive won’t boot up, software won’t help to fix the problem.
As always, you should carefully read the instructions that come with your data recovery software. Always mount the drive with the missing data as a slave drive. This is by far the most important thing to keep in mind when looking for a data recovery program.
If you’re uncomfortable doing this, take the drive to a professional data recovery company. As always, feel free to post if you have a question about a complex or simple data recovery problem and we’ll do our best to post about it.
When Is It Safe To Run Data Recovery Software On A Hard Drive?
We received a question today from Christ, who wrote:
Do you have any advice on how to test a drive and determine if the drive is a good candidate for software recovery or if it should be sent to the pros. I have heard of several cases now of people trying “good” data recovery software, not getting results and then sending their drive to the pros only to find out that the attempt they made caused way too much damage to the “pallets” and now the pros can’t help.
First of all, Chris, thanks for commenting.
The pallets you’re referring to are commonly called platters, and they’re magnetic disks made of metal or glass that hold all of your data. Here’s a picture of hard drive platters:
Presented under Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA.
You can see the heads to the right. The hard drive uses read/write heads to get information from the discs as they spin, and the heads move all over the place to get data from the right points. They never actually touch the platters unless something goes wrong.
When a hard drive fails, however, the heads can come into contact with the platters, and they can physically scrape the data off of the disc, permanently destroying data. This can occur when a hard drive runs after it has failed–and especially when it’s running intensive software like data recovery software.
Testing A Drive - There’s no surefire way to test whether a hard drive’s platters are coming into contact with its heads without opening it up, which you definitely can’t do outside of a clean room.
However, a good indication of platter and head contact is noise. Try listening closely to your hard drive. Take the cover off of your computer if you need to.
Listen for a whirring sound, a click (you might have heard this referred to as the “click of death”) or anything else besides smooth, quiet operation. If you hear an unusual noise, chances are good that the hard drive could lose its data if you ran software for an extended period of time.
If the hard drive doesn’t make any noise, it’s probably suffering from an electronic issue, so data recovery software won’t help you get your data back, but it won’t make the problem worse to run it.
Of course, if you’re trying to get a deleted or corrupt file from a hard drive, data recovery software can be very useful, but always remember to install the data recovery software on a different drive. If you install it on the drive which holds your data, you’ll overwrite it.
Thanks for the question, Chris. If anyone else has data recovery questions, tips, or anything else, post in our comments.
Questions To Ask A Data Recovery Company
One of our readers asked our opinion of a specific data recovery company in our comments. We can’t comment on anyone that we haven’t had direct experience with, as it’s very difficult to accurately say whether a certain DR company is reputable or not unless there are glaring signs one way or another.
For instance, if you look at a company like DataRecovery.com or DataTech (both of which are listed in our recommended companies), you’ll see that they have major clients, a track record, and the necessary technology to perform physical data recovery. Without getting into a detailed list, there are other major data recovery companies with the track records and history to back up their claims of excellent data recovery services, but there are also copycat companies that don’t provide quality services, and separating one from the other can be difficult if you don’t ask the right questions.
Here are a few things to ask before sending your hard drive to any company for data recovery:
Do you have a clean room? A clean room is absolutely necessary for physical hard drive recovery. Class 100 or lower is best–the number refers to the amount of contaminants in a square foot of air. A Class 100 clean room is standard for the industry.
Can you fix firmware issues? The firmware of a hard drive often needs slight tweaks and changes during a data recovery, and in some instances, it needs to be completely rewritten. The problem is that firmware repair equipment is expensive, and some data recovery companies don’t bother with it. Ask your DR company if they can work with firmware.
What’s your average turnaround time? Most data recovery companies can’t guarantee a turnaround time, but they can at least give you an average for different service levels. It’s good to know this before you ship your drive off.
How much would data recovery cost in different situations? Many data recovery companies quote different prices for different types of hard drive data recovery, so it’s hard to get an idea of what your case will cost until you send it in. Nevertheless, you can see how a certain provider stacks up to their competitors by asking about specific data recovery scenarios and how much they’d cost.
What are the names of a few of your major clients? Data recovery companies will often brag about their major clients, and if a provider has worked with a dozen Fortune 500 companies, there’s a good chance that they’re professional and knowledgeable. Basically, by asking this question, you’re trusting the work that large companies put into evaluating your data recovery provider. It’s a quick, effective way to judge a recovery company’s capabilities.
How is data returned to me? This is important, because return media is sometimes an extra cost. Know all of your costs up front.
What are your service levels? Data recovery companies usually have a few different service levels to suit different turnaround time needs, so if you need a fast recovery, be sure to ask this question.
How long have you been in business? Beware of data recovery companies that haven’t been around for more than a few years.
What other services do you provide? A good data recovery company may offer services similar to DR such as data transfer and conversion. However, they’ll rarely offer consumer-level computer services such as computer repair or sales.
How is data privacy protected? We recommend choosing a data recovery provider with strict privacy controls to prevent data from leaving a lab and risking your personal information. Some data recovery companies now offer encryption for return media, so that’s something to consider if you’re transferring especially sensitive data.
How does your process work? A good data recovery company should be able to explain the basics of their recovery process. Beware companies that allow software to run on hard drives for days on end in an attempt to recover data; they’ll often do more harm than good.
If you’re evaluating a new data recovery company, you should talk to them at length about hard drives and their process, even if you’re not particularly knowledgeable. The more that you learn about data recovery, the better your chances of separating the low quality providers from the reputable ones, and you’ll only be able to evaluate the knowledge and experience of a company by speaking with them at length.
That post ended up a bit longer than we’d expected, but if you have any questions or if you’d like to add to this list of data recovery questions, post below in our comments.
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Data Recovery
If you are one of the many people who had to redo their final school papers, business proposals or business presentations because of unforeseen system crashes or virus attacks, it is probably because you were not aware that data recovery is possible. Ok, so stop sighing and regretting because everything is done and over with. Next time it happens to you, you now know that you do not have to do everything from scratch because data can actually be recovered.
There are two common ways in retrieving your lost data – on your own or through the services of a professional data recovery company. When you want to try and recover data on your own, you can do some research online in the methods to so. Many people prefer to buy data recovery software to make the task at hand easier. As a reminder, not all software claiming to recover your data will do so, that is why it is important for you to determine an authentic one because you do not want to spend your hard-earned money on something that does not work, do you? Finding one that works though should be commended since doing so is like finding a needle in a haystack.
Perhaps the best way to retrieve lost data the safe, fast, and most efficient way is to acquire the services of a data recovery company. There are a lot of companies online offering to retrieve your lost data but it is still best to do a background check on the company and do a thorough comparison of these companies so that you can be sure that your data will be retrieved as promised.
Although recovering data through a professional company will entail a bit of a cost, it is still minute compared to the benefits of retrieving data in terms of money and time. You do not have to worry when you bring your system to a particular data recovery company since they have a specialized staff assigned to work with retrieving lost data. The staff at most companies are considered experts in the field so you can rest your mind from reservations about the service that they will provide you. You are getting the best service possible when you work with a professional company.
However, these companies will not be able to do their job as fast and accurate as possible if you do not give them information as to the things you did prior to losing your data. This is the most important information that you should know and you must be able to give this to them clearly so that they will be able to assess the problem and will know the first step to take in recovering your lost data.
Whatever method you choose in recovering your lost data, it would still be wise to create a backup of any important file that you have. But since accidents do happen, you do not have to worry a great deal anymore because lost data can be retrieved, thereby saving you from all the time and effort that you would have to put in redoing everything.
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