I am writing this review because I think it's important that individual and consumer users…read moreunderstand that this is *not* a local shop by any means. My impression is that this is a service better suited for businesses, not individuals.
My adult daughter had a failure of an external hard drive at a very unfortunate time, where she needed the files recovered from it as soon as possible. Unsure of where to go for this type of issue, she consulted with another person and chose Secure Data Recovery because it was nearby, and because they had some strong reviews.
She brought it into the drop-off desk in downtown Portland. The person there informed her of Secure Data Recovery's standard diagnosis and recovery times (which were much longer than expected). The person at the drop-off desk was not able to answer my daughter's additional questions (and admittedly my daughter was a bit freaked out), and so the person at the desk called one of the technicians to talk with my daughter. My daughter is fairly tech-savvy, but having no experience of whether these were typical timeframes for diagnosis and recovery, or if other options were available, my daughter left the drive there on a Friday afternoon.
In reconsidering over the weekend, we decided we felt more comfortable trying other services in town that might be able to do a quicker turnaround. Since the Portland drop-off desk is closed on the weekend, we went back in at 9am on Monday morning, only to find that the drive had been sent to Los Angeles. From the website, we got the impression that the clean lab was in Portland, but no - it was 1000 miles away.
This was not what we expected. Working with a few folks at Secure Data Recovery, we asked that they overnight the drive back to us without diagnosing (if we'd wanted to start even a slightly expedited process, it would have cost us almost $300). We paid a fee to get the drive overnighted back to us, and got the drive Tuesday afternoon. We subsequently took it somewhere local, and were able to recover all of the data off the drive in a pretty timely manner.
If you have a really complex, intense, and/or specialized issue, it may well be that Secure Data Recovery would be a good choice for you. If you are simply trying to diagnose your issue - personally, I would recommend trying a good, competent local service first.
The drop off desk on the 31st floor of Big Pink was, in my experience, just that - a place to drop off your drive or system. In both instances where I or my daughter talked with the person staffing the desk, they seemed unable to give us even a simple update or status. When we came to pick up the drive, we were told that it was probably at their lab in Los Angeles, but the person couldn't definitely tell us so. We ended up calling the number we had while standing about 10 feet from the desk to try to connect with someone. It was frankly a little surreal.
I work in tech and have worked with IT service desks for years, so I have experience working with corporate IT services. While we did receive an email immediately after dropoff with options, etc., this whole transaction felt much more like working with a corporate IT service desk rather than an individually-focused customer service organization. Additionally, the live discussion we had with a technician simply felt geared toward someone who is an IT person, with a tinge of "we know what's best for you, and your choices seem illogical" thrown in (I can't think of any other way to describe it - if you've had this type of conversation, you know what I mean). In the end, I'm pleased we got the drive back in a relatively timely manner, but in retrospect, I wish the damned thing had stayed local.
Again, if you're an IT person or in a small business, or have a really gnarly issue, this may be a perfectly fine option. For consumers who aren't as tech-savvy, it seems like this would have been a nightmare. I think a good first step would be to ensure that the dropoff desk staff are more tech-savvy themselves, more knowledgeable about the process, and able to more directly provide answers to walk-in customers.