Vantage Data Recovery

Data recovery is not meant to be a foolproof alternative to backing up.  Any professional data recovery company that has been in business for a while has experienced situations where data could not be recovered, or not recovered in its entirety.  If your hard drive suffers a head crash and scrapes all of the magnetic coating off your disks, no one can put it back.  If your data is erased, then physically overwritten, it’s gone.  If your hard drive, tape, photo card, whatever, is in a fire or flood, it may be recoverable.  It may not.  The success or failure of the data recovery process can depend on the physical condition of the media, what caused the failure/data loss, what attempts may have already been made to recover the data, the type of media, etc, etc.

So how do companies claim a 99% data recovery rate?  To be honest, I’m not really sure.  Perhaps they only handle simple recoveries where head crashes and other mechanical failures can’t affect their “recovery rate”.  Perhaps they just like the way it sounds.  Perhaps they have only been in business for a week, or only done a handful of recoveries.  Perhaps they are not basing their percentages on the total number of data recovery projects that come to them.  There used to be a company who advertised that they recovered “100% of all recoverable data”! 

Whatever the reason, common sense would tell you that it is just not possible over the long term.  A professional full-service data recovery company with years of experience will see its fair share of unrecoverable data.  When you are looking for a company to handle your valuable data, beware of inflated claims.  No data recovery company or process is infallible.  Not all data is recoverable.