I wish I had read some of the reviews ahead of contacting this company but the 'bad' reviews are conveniently buried under 'good' ones. I contacted Fields on via their website and the initial online 'calculation' was between £250-850. Then someone called me to discuss. Then came the response via email from P.H who offered FREE Collection via DHL and provide a NO-OBLIGATION quote for recover. The email did not have the quote prices listed. The hard drive was picked up and after they had done their initial 'tests' they bombarded me with phone calls and emails. I was working so I asked on a few occasions for findings to be put in writing and I was given the run around. The pushy sales approach, reluctance to put anything in writing, something felt off so I made sure I got a transcript of BOTH telephone conversations I had with them. So then came 'The good news'. 'All the files of the Hard drive were in tact' (he even listed the name of the files and the people ON the files) He stated. 'They had 'fixed the issue.' (Why if you were only taking a look?) 'Stabilised the disk. Managed to gain access to approximately 4TB of data'(basically all). 'The quality was in tact. Folder/Files names had been preserved along with the data quality.' I just needed to pay £850 plus vat or flat rate £1020 +vat if I purchased a for a new Hard Drive from them. That quote was for a limited period and would go up. I had stated that the price was above my means and J.M suggested I use paypal via instalments to cover the cost over several months. There was a hard sell and play on my desperation to get my files returned to me. When I asked for my hard drive back Jason stated that if I did not 'take up the opportunity to use there services they would have to 'put back' the drive to its original state and he cannot then guarantee the files will still be there.' I stated I could not afford the to cover the cost but would think about it. J.M then suggested I pay via paypal options. The hard sell continued and so I suggested I take a few days to either think about it or come up with the finances.. He said that if 'we didn't go ahead then he would 'get it off the server' and put it back to it's original state' and there are no guarantees I would be able to retrieve it again.' A few days later I spoke with J.M again and stated I would no be able to afford the costs at this time. He again stated there would be 'No guarantee of getting the same result in the future. There may be less data. Quality affected when a drive has suffered a 'physical issue' and it doesn't matter whether I go to someone else. A friend. Another company or use software myself - After they 'put it back to it's original state' no guarantee they will get the same result as the first.' J.M's demeanour changed. He tried every 'scare tactic' in the book. I asked for my drive to be sent back and he stated it would be 'Sent back via free, standard post. Non tracked' I suggested that I pay for it to be tracked to ensure I actually received my HD. I paid £15+vat for it to be sent via DHL. Yet the drive was sent back via Royal Mail Tracked 24 at a fraction of the cost - £6.65 so they even overcharged me for postage. I sent them an email asking for a refund, cc-in everyone involved and the request has been ignored. I have since done a ton of research on this company. Wow! There are a huge amount of complaints, dating back YEARS from numerous offices in a multitude of countries! I WOULDN'T recommend this company. The sales people just try and strong arm people into paying more. My guess is they set their 'rate' according to how much they think the data is worth. Surely not an ethical practice. AVOID FIELDS AND ANY SISTER COMPANIES SET UP BY THESE SCAM ARTISTS. read more

Fields Data Recovery are terrible. They charged me £1,668 to recover data from an SSD (solid state drive). What they failed to tell me, however, is that its almost impossible to recover data from an SSD because of a feature called TRIM. I got zero data back and am also £1,668 out of pocket. I wish I had just researched them for 5 minutes before sending them my SSD. Please beware. read more

I've had to deal with this company in the last month (to recover some data from some RAID disks). These are my complaints based on my experience:- - Timewasters even with express service; their express service (which they just applied without confirmation because I said I wanted the data "as soon as") increases the cost by at least 50% and, in my case, took as long as their so-called standard service, i.e. more than 3 days (took 1 week in total from them receiving it at Fields Data Recovery to us receiving the recovered data at our office) - Way too expensive, even when you state you're a charity (which is for whom the data was being recovered); you'd expect them to be charitable given the margin of profits they're receiving - Can't understand simple instructions and mix up files you're referring to so talking to your 'account manager' becomes a really painful experience as he isn't at all clued up technically and waffles on about data being very difficult to retrieve, bad sector, a lot of work to retrieve the data, and whatever else he can make up - Whatever you do, do not specify the files you're after, otherwise they'll only look for these specific files and get that wrong too (so just better to specify you want *everything* back) - Related to the above: had to do at least 4 iterations to get the files I needed; they could have just done it the first time round (delay was as a result of their incompetency and nothing else) - Tend to come up with made-up excuses, e.g. a MySQL file being in a damaged sector when it actually wasn't even there, requiring SQL viewer to find out what the last modified date was on a (MySQL INNODB) file (especially when they achieved that in a previous iteration without the said application)! - Can only provide a reliable list the first time around (on their portal which shows Last Change/Modified timestamps next to each file and the folder/file structure); their "linux" software doesn't work for subsequent iterations (what?!) which means you're provided with a list of text files without timestamps (for subsequent iterations) so it becomes impossible to determine if a certain file (which is in multiple locations) is the correct, updated version you're after - They don't care one jot about customer service; all they're after is your money so don't give it to them until they've met your every demand and you're sure they've recovered the files you're after (I guess this is stating the obvious and applies equally to all data recovery companies) - Once they get the money, their responses become a lot slower and/or stop completely (surprise, surprise) and it's you who has to call them (only to find they're not at their desk (conveniently) each time you call) - They provide an FTP link to some of the data (so you can retrieve the most important data prior to them sending it physically) but, again, as I mentioned earlier, with specifying a list to them you know they're just going to get it wrong (which is exactly what happened in my case even though I spelled it out to them clearly along with the full path to each file and in which priority I wanted the data) - Only went with these guys because they were recommended by a friend and - because I was desperate to get it sorted and wasn't thinking straight - I didn't read their reviews beforehand - Try more reliable companies who have better reviews (look on other review websites and forums too to get an idea) read more