I have a HP with Win7 and Ubuntu10.04, dual boot sector damaged, called Staples Easy Tech on Thursday and the guy said it will be an easy fix, so I brought it in. The basic charge was $40 for maybe to make the box to start up, then I was told it costs $170 to recover data, so I paid. Friday the guy said there's an issue with Windows data recovery, but it will be fixed definitely on Monday. Monday a 2nd guy said the 1st guy's approach wouldn't work on my box, so he's trying a different configuration. Then a 3rd guy told me same thing (with different details) two days later. I came in Wed 4pm coz the 3rd told me on phone the data restore will finish in 3 min, turned out I waited in store for 1.5 hours and the copy of recovered data to my hard drive was stilll running. They said there's problem copying data to my hard drive, so I bought a $90 portable drive and said plz just copy all my users files to portable drive, I will come in tomorrow and pick up the box and this drive. Next day (the 8th day) I came in, the guys at the desk said they didn't know the details, coz the 3rd guy left for the day. I had to go thru the directories to verify the recovered data. A quick glance found mismatch between their original backup of my files (which i couldn't take coz it's on their drive) and those copied onto the new portable drive. Their explaination is somehow directory tree copy just freezes, so they had to manual copy, and missed some files. during the 8 days, three different guys worked on the PC, and they didn't share among them what works what doesn't. I called several times over the 8 days, and a guy was very impatient and said something like "we didn't tell u it's ready" - implying i shouldn't call. Until I said "u guys promised me it will finish in 2 hours, for several days" did he reluctantly transfer my call. They didn't recover all the user data files, I know some folders are missing.
My observation during several visits: the lady manager doesn't know technologies, the older guys mis-spelled ubuntu (in several places), couldn't name their data recovery tool, my name was mis-spelled, the younger guys couldn't effectively compare the directory structures as I do, but chitchat while I was verifying data, no technical working record, only one young guy Paul seems to be ok, other guys see me as a trouble customer. Several customers data are in one portable hard drive, printer is far away from working desk, nobody was at the desk during lunch break.
That's my experience with them - $210 fee, a $90 external drive, and 8 days. read more