Vantage Data Recovery

You suddenly can’t access critical data, and in a panic search the web for help.  And find it.  Too much of it actually.  A search on Google for “data recovery” will give you over 20 million hits!  Sorting through your options, you start to wonder - Why won’t some of these people tell you how much your data recovery project will cost, while others offer to recover your data for $99.00?  Why are data recovery prices so varied, and why are some companies advertising flat rates? 

The $99 special

“We can recover all of your data for only $99.00, regardless of the size of the drive”  As consumers we would all like to believe claims like this, but honestly how much effort do you think you are buying for $99.00.  And from who?

Professional data recovery companies are staffed by experienced people with strong technical knowledge of hardware, software, operating systems, networks, file structure, etc.  They have clean room environments and the proper equipment for safely opening and repairing drives.  They have an inventory of parts for many of the hundreds of different drives, and the resources to acquire others.  Professional data recovery companies are constantly working to stay up to date on the latest data storage technologies, while maintaining the knowledge hardware and parts needed for older technologies, drives and systems.  Additionally, hardware for processing recoveries, verifying data, virus scanning, and quickly writing recovered data back to CD, DVD, tape, or hard drive is necessary.  The investment in both personnel and hardware is not inconsiderable.

So what is a company doing for $99.00?  Probably nothing that any reasonably computer savvy person couldn’t do themselves.  Hook the drive up to another system and see if it will run.  If it doesn’t due to some mechanical failure, label it “unrecoverable”.  If it does, run some commercially available “data recovery” software and hope that it can accurately diagnose and repair the problem.  Maybe it will.  But maybe it won’t.

At Vantage, when your media arrives, a technician examines it to determine recoverability.  Each recovery project is handled individually, and a firm price quote is given based on the problems with that particular project.  Mechanical failures are addressed in a clean room environment.  An image of the media before recovery is attempted, safeguarding your original data in an “as-failed” condition.  Only after an exact copy of your media is made does the recovery process begin.  With a real person making the diagnosis and determining the corrective action to be taken - not a piece of software.

When a flat rate isn’t flat

“We charge a flat rate for all types of recoveries.”  For the consumer, the question should be “Are there hidden costs?”  Some (not all) data recovery companies who advertise flat rates also charge clean room fees, priority handling fees, parts fees, fees for returning your original drive, and even per disk fees for the CD’s or DVD’s they return your data on.  There are also up-charges for RAID systems, non-windows systems and flood or fire damage.  A few even advertise they will only recover data from working drives! 

Experienced, professional data recovery companies who charge a flat rate generally do so based on the capacity of the drive.  Larger drives take more time to recover and therefore cost more.  Beyond that, they are using the law of averages.  Only a certain percentage of drives sent for recovery need physical repairs and/or parts, and these companies figure out where their average is and charge accordingly.  There’s nothing wrong with that, all types of businesses do it.  (It’s like a mechanic advertising a specific price to do a certain repair on your car.  He knows that sometimes it takes 1 hour, sometimes it takes 2, so if he charges everyone for an hour and a half it will all work out.)  What a reputable company will NOT do is advertise a single price for all recoveries regardless of drive size or problem, and then tack on fee after fee until your cost has doubled or tripled the original estimate.

The written estimate

Before any actual recovery begins, you should always get a written estimate.  It should specifically state that it is a firm price.  We are occasionally able to pleasantly surprise a client by bringing a job in under our original estimate.  We never charge them more.  If your chosen recovery company tells you it will cost $500 to recover your data, and halfway through the project says it will really cost $1000, what do you do?  Be sure the quote, whether flat rate or based on an evaluation is in writing and guaranteed.  Profesional data recovery companies don’t hold your data “hostage”, nor do they use bait & switch tactics.

Amount of data vs. drive capacity

I know it’s a 200 gig drive, but I only need a few files.”  Sometimes this makes a difference, depending on the problem.  Many times it doesn’t.  If, for example, a hard drive has a mechanical failure which requires clean room time and parts to make it functional, that cost is in no way affected by the amount of data on the drive.  There is also a certain amount of time for various processes that are more dependent on the size of the media itself than the amount of data needed.

Some companies advertise that they price according to the amount of data they recover, not the size of the drive.  This would probably work if all you are doing is running some software and copying files.  For those companies, their cost of doing a particular job is in transferring the data to the return media, so less data would be less time and therefore less cost.  Generally speaking, established, professional firms base their pricing on time and materials costs for a particular make/model, and under certain circumstances give some consideration  to the amount of data.

Discounts

“This is my home computer, not my business computer.”  Unfortunately, your computer does not know the difference.  The data recovery process is the same regardless of what is stored on the media.  At Vantage we do not charge a premium to businesses.  Many companies will offer discounts to specific groups, such as natural disaster victims, but others have a laundry list of people they give discounts to, covering almost everyone.   If you are giving discounts to more than half your customers, what you are really doing is charging the others extra to offset the cost of those “discounts”.

The bottom line

Price should not be your only criteria for choosing a data recovery company, (see: Choosing a Data Recovery Company ) but it is certainly a factor.  As in all other financial transactions, “buyer beware”.  There are a thousand truisms - “you get what you pay for”, “if it seems too good to be true…” etc - and many of them are appropriate here.  Read all of the fine print and ask questions.  When you compare prices, be sure you are comparing prices for similar services.  Watch out for hidden fees, bargain basement pricing, and bait-and-switch tactics.  Be an informed consumer.

In the end, it is up to you decide which data recovery company is right for you.  How important is your data?�