<p>My Mac hard drive crashed. I thought I had it set up to backup automatically but apparently it never backed up. Anyway, I have years and years worth of pictures, videos, documents, music from CDs that I have since tossed, music from iTunes that I should be able to get from iTunes but I don’t know how, and probably tons of stuff I’m forgetting about. Oh, and probably 90% of the stuff on there is my ex husband’s stupid stuff that I hate. </p>
<p>The initial place I took it to said they couldn’t recover any data so they shipped it off to Drivesavers Data Recovery who just called me with a quote for $2200 to $2600 if they “successfully” recover my data. They, in their sole discretion, determine what constitutes success and where on the price continuum of $2200 to $2600 the price will fall.</p>
<p>This seems absolutely nutso to me. I’m tempted to walk away but there are photos and videos of my daughter when she was young (buried in all the zillions of stupid photos taken by my ex-husband). (He doesn’t want to pay for the recovery).</p>
<p>Is this some kind of a scam? Or a legitimate price for a legitimate service? </p>
<p>I’m so angry with myself for screwing up the backing up!!</p>
<p>I do think that data recovery can be critically important to businesses, and so you might be working with a business class firm quoting business class rates – whereas the site a linked to above is probably aimed at consumers. Assuming the site is a legit business (again, I have no personal knowledge)- they may be able to stay in business and offer those rates because of their business model: </p>
<p>"You pay NOTHING up-front! No diagnostic or “attempt” fees.</p>
<p>If we recover anything less than 99.9% of ALL your files, it’s your choice to pay $300 for the data we recovered or decline the recovery and pay nothing."</p>
<p>So basically if they can’t recover data, their customers pay nothing – so no cause for complaint.</p>
<p>And if they do recover the data – and it is stuff the customer wants – then their customers are going to be absolutely delighted to pay the $300. </p>
<p>They’ve got a large number of positive reviews on Yelp… so apparently legit. </p>
<p>My guess is that if there is one company offering cheap data recovery there are others - so you might do some more Googling. The downside is that if they can’t recover the data and they don’t return the drive - then you could lose data that maybe a company with more sophisticated equipment could recover-- but then again you have to ask yourself what your lost data is worth. Yes, the sentimental value is priceless… but if I were in your shoes I’d be leaning toward the guys who charge $300.
(If you were a business trying to recover years of customer data… my answer would be different)</p>
<p>Edit: a quick Google search for “low cost data recovery” came up with other options, so the $300 fee is not all that crazy. </p>
<p>Thanks. Appreciate that. The original place I took it to was exactly like the $300 place you linked to. They guaranteed recovery or no charge for about the same price. They couldn’t recover anything but “recommended” this expensive place and shipped the drive off to them … It feels like a very expensive upsell. And I’m so technologically backward that I feel like I’m at a tremendous disadvantage. </p>
<p>Data recovery from failing hard drives…especially ones due to hardware failure is a risky exceedingly difficult process with no guarantees. </p>
<p>If the failure is serious enough to result in scratched surface platters on the hard drive or the file formatting/data is corrupted enough, it’ll likely take the equipment/lab and expertise of someone/firm charging somewhere in the neighborhood of a few thousand to tens of thousands and up…with no guarantees they’ll be able to recover anything. </p>
<p>Also, keep in mind that each time an attempt is made to recover data, there’s more opportunities for further damage to the hard drive so if recovery is possible, it’s imperative for the recoverer to copy as much of the data off as quickly and carefully as possible. </p>
<p>I’ve done relatively simple cases for clients, but don’t do it too often as the liability and stakes involved are too high and I don’t have the higher end equipment needed for the more serious cases. </p>
<p>We shipped D’s drive to Datahounds after her computer crashed and burned. It only cost us the price of shipping. Sadly, they couldn’t recover anything (nor could the engineers at S’s College). </p>
<p>We never tried another company who would have charged for he attempt. </p>
<p>We also got a full refund for the purchase of the computer from AmEx Costco due to extended warranty. </p>
<p>@nottelling-- am right there with you. Same thing happened to me last summer, but not trusting the automatic backup to that time machine or capsule thing, I back up manually periodically. So I only lost three months of work, but still unfortunate.</p>
<p>After the local place could not recover, they sent to Drivesavers who quoted a price slightly lower than your price. I let it sit for a while (weeks?) and they counter offered with lower price for less recovery. SO….you may try asking how much to only recover photos & movies? Plus music, since there is an actual dollar value there if you can’t recover via iTunes. </p>
<p>This just happened to my daughter. She is devastated because all of her grad school schoolwork (including 15 page paper-in-progress) is potentially lost. Best Buy told her that they would need to ship her laptop to the mainland (she lives in Honolulu). She brought it to a local computer repair shop recommended by Toshiba. The first tech told her that nothing could be recovered but a different tech tried and was able to recover some data (2GB worth), transferring it to the external hard drive that her dad had bought her to back up her computer (which she obviously never did). She will pick it up today and find out if her paper survived. They will only charge her $25 because so little data was recovered. Best Buy Geek Squad data recovery service charges $49.99 for diagnosis and then provides an estimate for data recovery (per website ranging from $450 to $1450+). </p>
DriveSavers is notorious for their high prices but they are one of the original data recovery companies. If you are looking for more affordability you might try Western Data Recovery. http://www.westerndatarecovery.com