Seagate recovered my data FOR free
TL;DR: Seagate recovered…read moremy data from an old drive that had failed FOR FREE, for real.
This review is about the Seagate Recovery Services division.
I am going to do my best to be as objective as possible. In other words, this review is BYOC (bring your own conclusion).
I purchased a ST31000340NS drive In November 2008 while I was living in US. I did not purchase Data Recovery, and I don't remember that I was aware of it, or if it was offered at the time of purchase by the retailer. The drive failed in October 2011, while still under warranty. I do not remember losing data at that time. Seagate replaced the drive at no charge with a certified repaired drive of exactly the same type.
About five years later, the replacement drive also failed, and this time I believe I lost some data. The drive failed gradually and I was able to copy most of my data off of it. However, some of the data could not be copied, and because of the large number of files, I was not sure if the data that I could not copy was actually important andfurthermore, I wasn't even sure what files I could not copy. I kept the drive with the intention that if later I discovered that I can't find some important data, I would send it to a data recovery service.
Fast forward to about a month ago. I had been living in the UK for a few months, and I was looking for some old scanned documents, that I might or might have not had in the past.
At that point I decided to look into that recovery. I contacted a data recovery service here in UK, after doing some due diligence. It was going to cost £195/395 + VAT, potentially more depending on the difficulty of the data recovery process.
Just as I was communicating with this data recovery service, I had the inspiration to also contact Seagate's own data recovery division.
I called and talked with a customer representative, who after understanding exactly my situation, offered the service free of charge, with an exception/waiver from regular fees which would've applied without the data Recovery plan, which would have been expired anyway, considering the age of the drive, even at the time it failed.
I sent the drive to their labs in Netherlands, and a couple of days ago I received a brand-new drive back with the data from the old one recovered.
I find it hard to use words to express my gratitude for what Seagate did, but I'm going to do it anyway. Thank you, thank you, thank you!