I would say this is a case of "you get what you pay for." It's expensive, but if you can't afford to not get your data back, go with Secure Data Recovery Services (SDRS). Their turnaround time was impressively quick. I worked primarily with Fred, and he did a fantastic job. He called me multiple times to update me on how the process was going, and also responded by email to my many questions. The process was relatively painless (no one wants to pay upwards of $1000 for an avoidable calamity, but that's not their fault). They have the process streamlined, so you will only have to click a few links to agree to their terms, and they are very responsive by email/phone if you have questions/concerns. I got the results of my diagnostic back 48 hours after dropoff, and my data back 7 days after dropoff, which is a pretty quick turnaround considering this counts a day for shipping the drive to their lab. The other places I checked with told me it would be 2-3 weeks. Getting your data back is expensive. It cost me $1200 to recover 2 GB of data from a thumb drive. The advantage of SDRS is that they will charge you $0 if they cannot recover your data and will also do the diagnostic for free, whereas other places will charge you $200 or more just for the attempt. This means that SDRS has to charge more for successful recoveries to absorb the cost of failed attempts (although it seems there are not many of these), and to pay for the free diagnostics they are doing. Ultimately I was happy with my choice. read more

I did a very stupid thing and forgot to back up an external hard drive. The hard drive was less than 8 months old and it died (that company will be hearing from me). The data was stuff that would be difficult to duplicate and if I did try to do that, it would literally take many 40-hour weeks to do so. I contacted Secure Data Recovery Services based on a recommendation from a friend who is VP of tech at his company. So, when calling the company, Alec Sakenes picked up my call and he was fantastic through the whole process. He explained everything to me in detail so that there would be no surprises. He walked me through the process and it was rather simple. Most of what we did was online via e-mail and Internet and it worked out very well. Alec was extremely responsiveness and was always a step ahead of me - checking in to let me know what was going on and making sure that everything was going okay. They were able to retrieve all of my data which was crazy. That was the good part - the not so good part was the fee for the recovery. But, after hearing from my friend what goes into a recovery, the fact that they were able to do so and do a thorough job was impressive. In the end, I opted to pay the fee to obtain my data. There comes a mini vacation we were planning but I have all of my data and I learned a VERY important lesson - back up multiple times and in multiple places!! Thank you, Alec, for such wonderful customer service. You really made me feel like a valued customer and I really like that you explained everything, told it like it was and never pressured me. Overall, the customer service (Alec) and technical assistance was fantastic and extremely professional. I would highly recommend Alec and this company. read more

YOU GUYS ROCK!!! You saved my $&%* from the IRS. I had a file I needed to complete my tax filing with the IRS, and of course my computer CRASHED a week before I needed to file. And guess what, my super fantastic online automated back-up system didn't work on all my files, and the last backup was over a year ago, which means the backup file was worthless. I would have paid ANYTHING to get that file!! You guys could have charged me pretty much anything you wanted, however, you charged a competitive rate, and was able to make that completely useless and broken harddrive work and get me my data back fast. Whew!! (And you were able to recover EVERY SINGLE FILE on the hard drive!!) BTW, I read the other guy's post about being too expensive, and I checked with other providers and you guys were competitively priced AND had a local site to drop off the hard drive to get restored. Please real humans to talk to. I really appreciated it, and THANKS so much for saving my bacon. I did NOT want to have to tell the IRS "My dog ate my 1040 form." I don't think they would respond kindly to that. You probably save me $1,000's of dollars in penalties! Thanks again for being there when I needed you most. You guys Rock!! read more

Chris McMacken is AWESOME!!!! First off, data recovery is difficult and expensive. Plus, you are trusting your most delicate files/personal information to a company, it's a little scary. These guys are fantastic! They are quick, reliable, and extremely affordable. Trust me, I did my research and really looked for the best deal. I was shocked to find that Secure Data Recovery not only had the top certifications, but they were also the best price! They do everything right, from having an easy local drop off location, to allowing you to choose how quickly you needed the information back. It's a terrifying thing to lose everything from your computer, and if you want to ensure that you will get back all your lost data, don't go any further than Secure Data Recovery. Chris was so easy to work with, was quick with communication and getting back to me asap, and dealt with my freak out very calmly. If this ever happens again, I know there is a fix. Thank you so much for saving my lost files!!! So happy!!! BTW, here is the breakdown of Secure Data Recovery compared to the others, the competition doesn't compare (and they are all much more expensive!!): http://hard-drive-recovery-services-review.toptenreviews.com/ read more

The team at Secure Data Recovery was awesome in helping us recover data from an external wireless hard drive that we were backing up to in our household. I originally took it to a local computer repair shop and they weren't able to extract anything so I then found Secure Data Recovery on yelp and all the great reviews were true. -They were extremely detailed and helpful on the phone when I initially called to get info. -Their prices were the lowest that I found -They provided different turn around options depending on the urgency to get the data -The service was efficient and fast -They even provided a reasonable price for a hard drive option to return the data back to us. I would definitely recommend them to anyone! read more

My old computer hard drive started to fail before I was able to transfer my old files to my new computer. I was about to lose 4 years of family trip photos and other files. I went to Best Buy first and for $150.00 they sold me a My Passport Ultra portable hard drive, and attempted to transfer my data. They decided that if was running too slow and would have to send it out to the next level of recovery, $500 or more. I then found Secure Data Recovery Services via internet search and yelp reviews. I set up an acct and dropped off my media at the La Jolla Village drop off. After performing diagnostics they submitted a quote of $1600.00 to retrieve the data and transfer it to my Passport. I responded that it was more than I was willing to pay and to please send back my media. I then received another email saying that there may be a "cheaper option" to retrieve my data. I then requested my media be shipped back immediately... If there was a cheaper option, why wasn't that offered up front before I declined to pay their initial quote? Be careful when choosing someone to retrieve data from your bad hard drive. They know they "have you" and in my case I was about to lose many "priceless" family photos. I then took my hard drive to Staples and the Easy Tech Guys were able to retrieve and transfer all my data to the Passport for $80.00!! read more

I cannot thank the guys at secure data recovery enough for recovering all the data off a broken hard drive that we had sent to them. They were able to recover all of the data that we needed in a timely manner and they were very professional about it. They made sure to keep us informed every step of the way and worked with us whenever we needed some help. I will 100% be using secure data recovery for all my data recovery needs as well as any other services that they offer.I also want to give a big shout out to Chris for helping me throughout the whole situation. read more

Fred was great while working with me on recovering data from my computer and cellphone which both broke at the same time. Any time I called for an update he knew immediately of my case and what it entailed. Definitely made me feel like he was on top of my case and that my business was important to him. Major kudos. Secure Data Recovery was able to retrieve the data from my computer and send it back to me. At this time my cellphone is in a real bad way and they're trying a completely new way to try to get my data back (which is extremely important to me). They don't like failing it seems. Hopefully they're successful! Thanks for the continued hard work Fred and team! read more

Fred was super helpful, not only were they great with timeliness, they worked with me on my budget and were successful! I would definitely recommend them and use them again!!!! read more

My primary desktop crashed which contains many years' family photos, among other important personal data. I went to several local HDD recovery services but none of them was able to help me. Secure Data Recovery Services came to rescue me. They were able to inspect my HDD, provided me a quote, gave me a sample file dump to show me that they are capable of restoring my files, and started their work after received my approval. Throughout this process, Alec and his team demonstrated their professionalism and great attention to customer's privacy concern. Overall I am extremely pleased with their service and I would highly recommend them to my friends who need such kind of services. read more

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.... Well, I can't say enough about having all of my digital memories back. Rob Anderson was my service advisor and very professional, prompt (in rsponding and answering questions). While I admit I couldn;t get absolutely everything back - I got all the most important things. Thanks!!! read more

I cannot express the sheer terror after the 4th attempt to restart my PC, and seeing the same error message appear. My backup regime through the travels on my laptop has been my excuse to not backup for quite some time... We first attempted our own software recovery which failed and warned us not to continue as further reading on the hard drive may damage the data further. And it was prudent not to proceed because they ended up having to open my hard drive in the clean room. I turned to Secure Data Recovery and they saved me. They have been very professional from the first call to the final email to say they will be deleting my personal data after I confirmed all my data is safe and sound and reinstalled on my new PC. Although this was a costly expense, getting my data back was worth every cent to me. SDRS recovered what appears to be almost 100% of my data and gave me a directory list of the programs I had installed. I have tested many of my files and they open without problems. I also had an encrypted partition that they managed to restore to my great relief which had hundreds of family photo's on. Years worth of bookmark files, music files and playlists, and everything precious to me was restored. They charged me exactly what was quoted for which I was grateful for as many companies lack integrity these days. I am writing this because it was other reviews from professional websites and from Yelp that lead me to them. They are worth the money I spent. read more

They are very nice folks, and prompt in their service. I sent them a a RAID 1 array that wouldn't boot, that had a lot of important pictures on it. They received the drive, called me, and said that the drive was actually set up as RAID 0, the drives had catastrophic physical damage, and the data was completely unrecoverable. After I picked my chin up off the floor, managed to get my stomach under control, I had them send the drive back to me. I thought I'd gone crazy, because I was sure I'd set it up as RAID 1. As a last ditch effort, with basically no hope, I sent it to another data recovery service. Thank God I did. Sure enough, it was RAID 1, one drive had MINOR physical damage, and the redundant drive had only logical corruption. All files were recovered, at 25% of the price I expected to spend, since there was no physical damage on the redundant drive. Can you imagine if I'd just accepted what Secure Data Recovery Services had told me? At this point, I would not call Secure Data again. Although they are very nice folks, and prompt. I have my doubts as to their technical abilities, at least for RAID arrays. Maybe they're good for single drives. I learned a lot, and unfortunately my stomach paid the price. :) read more

The representative is fine. However, I am totally disappointed with their work done. I have sent my hard disk a couple of months ago to be investigated, and was informed 33% data is possible to be recovered. Therefore, I agreed to continue with the recovery with an extra fees being charged. In the end, out of 33% of data recovered, more than 90% are corrupted or damaged file. Not worth it and will not use them anymore. read more

Data recovery was super friendly and helpful. They worked with me to get my external hard drive to them, I only had to drop it off and someone packaged it and everything. Alec was very responsive to my e-mails and questions. They responded within a day as to the status of my external hard drive and explained everything, what broke and what needed to be fixed. Data recovery is a complicated process and many people don't know how to do it correctly. I had taken it to other places before and they had ran software recovery programs on it but was unsuccessful. Secure data recovery informed me that I could get 100 percent of my data back and explained exactly what needed to get done. read more

such a disaster dealing with these people. they mixed up which hard drive of mine they could recover ( after surprising me with the fact that if I didn't decide to use their services, they'd charge me return shipping!) , wouldn't admit to it (even though I repeatedly showed them in the email history.) and ended up with only a discounted price on something i was not able to pay at all . (they asked me what prce i would be comfortable with, and when i named a price said "thats too low", after telling me theyd match me) read more

My experience with the company leads me to believe that this is being run like it's a scam. I have a long story, but here are the key points... 1. I accidentally gave them the wrong drive which happen to be a perfectly good working hard drive. Their diagnostic team said it would require a teardown in a clean room to image the platters to the cost of thousands of dollars...to get the data off of a working harddrive. 2. I gave a lot of background information about the drives and the specific data that was on the drive. None of that information seemed to have made it from the sales person to the recovery team. If that actually considered any information I passed on then they would have known that they had the wrong drive. 3. They tried to sneak in a new contract that I was required to sign before they moved forward with the recovery. It essentially negated any agreements made beforehand. It gave them the right to do whatever kind of recovery they wanted to do (even a destructive recovery) regardless of the cost and you would have to pay for any of the data after that point. It set up the possibility that they could destroy your hard drive and hold the only copy of the data They could then demand whatever amount they wanted regardless of their earlier quotes and estimates. 4. They would never confirm whether or not they had the capacity to do a software based recovery. They would never really confirm anything. I understood and expected it to be an expensive process. I am an electrical engineer and I understand better than most customers the process of data recovery. I refused to agree to the work and the cost associated until I received a clear response on what they were capable of doing, what they intended to do and how much it would cost. In the end, they just shipped my hard drive back to me. The local guy is just a sales man. He ships the hard drive somewhere else and they do the recovery. It appears the business model is to recommend "the works" without diagnosing the problem and if someone is asking to many questions, just ship the dive back and move on to the next sucker. This all leads me to believe that they are not acting in the best interests of the customer. I would never recommend them to anyone...ever. read more