At my work, a Seagate hard drive went dead unexpectedly (PC unable to boot up, no prior problems…read morereported before it happened). The end user had no specific file targets but wanted to recover as much as possible, in no particular rush. Secure Data Recovery did a great job and I will recommend their services to others!
If the files are important to you and they are on a dead hard drive, at least go ahead with the free diagnostic service to find out the type of damage and what they think can be recovered - the diagnostic service doesn't commit you to the recovery service, and, at least in my experience, I found the customer service to be friendly, straightforward, and not at all pushy. We could have stopped after the diagnostic and received our damaged drive back.
How it played out for us: I first called to ask about their data recovery services, and was told that the cost might be anywhere from $500 to over $2000, depending on the type of damage found. Prepaid FedEx shipping was provided for overnighting the damaged drive to the company's lab in Ohio (I opted not to make a trip from the suburbs to the local Washington DC area office where I could have dropped off the damaged drive). After six days, we received the free diagnosis. Unfortunately, it was "severe platter damage" for which the data recovery cost is on the high end of the quoted range. Work approved the expense and we went ahead with it. Mr. Wright explained the details of what we could expect from what they call a "raw" data recovery. After eighteen days, the data recovery was completed and we were sent three detailed lists of the recovered files: approximately 17000 raw files, 8000 good files, 6000 bad files. We chose to buy a new storage drive from Secure Data Recovery to hold the recovered data (I opted not to send a drive of our own to the lab but that was an available alternative) and in three days the new USB drive was delivered by FedEx to our office.
Frederick Wright was the representative who handled our case from beginning to end with excellent customer service throughout the process--always friendly, professional and patient, at first in describing the overall process and later when explaining subsequent steps and options to me, since I had to handle the authorizations/payments and explain the process and anticipated results to the end user. Mr. Wright was reachable and responsive by phone and email, and I also appreciated the customer-friendly features on the Secure Data Recovery website that allowed a customer to request status updates, send notes to the service rep, and see times and dates of status changes and of authorizations submitted. The online digital signature process needed at several steps in the process was super easy - I loved being able to sign and return documents without printing on paper, signing, and scanning first.
Had it been my own personal data, I might have stopped after the diagnostic, but that would be because I do regular backups and so the loss would be small, probably not worth the cost. But, stuff does happen sometimes, and if my most recent non-backed-up files were really important and on a dead drive, then I would go with this company to attempt the data recovery.
