This review is for the location at 2604 Brownsville Rd., Pittsburgh 15227. I found that location…read morevia Google and did a double-check with Yelp to see that the reviews were consistently positive, because I was in a minor panic. When doing some freelance writing on my couch the other night, I picked up a glass of water and it tipped over, falling directly into my $1,200 Lenovo Yoga laptop. I tried to flip it over to get all of the water out. I tried to open up the back to get the battery and/or hard drive out. I failed on all counts, and it was pretty clear that the laptop had immediately short-circuited and wasn't coming back to life. At that point, your concern is your data - your many, many documents and photos that you were going to back up one day, but something else always took precedence. (If you're reading this, back up your data. Now.)
When you call the Secure Data Recovery phone number, you get a main office and they put you in touch with your local location. For me, that was just a few miles up Brownsville in a small shop that repairs cellphones, handles bill payments... I never would have noticed it. Jay was very honest, saying that if they could recover the hard drive data there at the shop they would try - and would even try to dry out and repair the laptop if at all possible. If they couldn't get the data, they'd send it out to Secure Data Recovery's main office where they have a clean room, are very good at what they do, but it would be more expensive.
By the end of the first day, they were able to confirm that, unfortunately, my laptop was history. The motherboard had fried and would be cost prohibitive to replace. They did think my hard drive looked to be in good shape, but couldn't read it, as it was an SSD drive, without a special reader they had to order and would have in the next morning. The next morning, they got the reader as promised, plugged in my hard drive and called with the good news that all of my data was there. They gave me the reader with the hard drive inside, which could be plugged in via any new computer's USB port and the files transferred with no problem, for... $75. Out the door for $75. A lifetime of documents and photos, saved. So fair.
I will not hesitate to use them again for computer issues (hopefully never again to include data recovery) or phone repairs, or to recommend them enthusiastically. Thank you, Jay and tech team!