Never again. I lost a few files (getting messages that they were corrupt or otherwise couldn't be opened) that are key to my business. I took my laptop and exterior hard drive to Procomp and showed the proprietor what was happening and that it was happening more frequently to more files. He said the files could be corrupt for any of several reasons. He gave me a few examples, none of which had anything to do with the exterior drive. I'm not computer-savvy when it comes to hardware, but I did ask him if the problem could possibly be with the exterior drive, and he said no. Since he's obviously much more experienced with computers than I am, and since he said there was nothing he could do for me, I took his word for it and tried a DIY approach.
Turns out the problem was with the exterior drive. So there is one thing he could have done for me: Just give me better information. If he had just said it's possible that the problem could be with the drive, I would have taken it to a data recovery place right away.
Instead, within the next few days, my laptop stopped being able to access anything on the drive. I contacted a couple of people I know who work with computers, who told me not to try and open the drive on my laptop anymore, because it could make the problem worse. (Too late for that.) And when I started vetting data recovery services and contacted a couple of them for more information, they also warned me not to try and open the drive or any of the folders or files on it.
So why didn't Procomp tell me this? Did they just not care? Or did they really not know that a defective hard drive could cause a problem like this? Either way, I'm staying away, and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone.
Oh, the data recovery service I used, ASAP Data Recovery, was superb and recovered almost all of my data. A few files (which I tried to open/repair after Procomp said my hard drive wasn't the problem) are permanently lost. read more