What will this cost? That is a very good question. Unfortunately, the answer is not easy. There is no minimum cost, but let's be honest with each other. It takes time, special equipment, effort and expertise to do this work and it is going to cost you something to have this service performed. Only you can determine if the exercise is worth the cost.
Could the cost be as little as $100? Yes, in some cases the recovery of the data is quite easy and that savings is passed on to you. Quite frankly, though, a recovery at this cost level is rare and only happens in cases where the drive behaves normally for us and requires no special effort to recover the data.
What's the price range? Zero and up. That's the short answer, but you want more information. As mentioned above, simple recoverys can be as little as $100. The more common simple recovery price is in the range of $350 to $850. Once we enter the arena of clean room work, you will most likely be looking at a price range beginning at around $700, yet we have accomplished clean room recoveries below that amount. More common clean room costs fall in the range of $800 to $1,600. The cost can be even more depending on the parts and micro-surgery required to bring the drive to a point where the data can be recovered. The rarest of clean room recoveries will fall in a range above $2,000. After an initial clean room evaluation, we will be able to better predict your cost.
Why not a flat rate? Some labs quote a flat rate based on the size of the media with a minimum charge that begins in the stratosphere and goes up from there. It's a practice known as skimming -- taking only those jobs where the customer agrees to an inflated price, regardless of the actual work involved. Our rates are based on the actual amount of time and parts required to do the job. You certainly wouldn't want to take your car in for an oil change and be charged for an engine replacement! Since you enjoy the same price with us as other shops that send us work, it's like buying at wholesale prices when you deal with us.
Is it worth the cost? The answer is one only you can provide. If the missing data can be re-entered by clerical staff at a "person-hour" cost of $8.50 and the data re-entry time is estimated to be ten hours, then you should probably just re-enter the data. If, on the other hand, it would take 20, 30 or 100s of hours to re-enter -- then let's try
data recovery
. If the data cannot be reconstructed from any source other than the hard drive itself, then you must determine the value of that data. That value may be based on its usefulness and how much you would be willing to pay to have it back. That would be the price point at which you would either accept or reject our price for the recovery.
Backup software is available
in a variety of forms, both for tape and other methods. If you're not planning to use a tape backup, check out some of the software titles available in computer stores. Any software worth its salt will allow you to schedule automatic backup files at a frequency you select. You can use these software solutions to reduce the data to a single backup file of a size that will fit on some sort of removable media (Zip, Jaz, removable hard drive, Read-Write CD's, etc.) Typically, using the non tape method, you would create a backup file on your hard drive. Once complete, copy the backup file to your removable media.
Virus Arrested, Files Recovered: Frequently, data loss can be due to a virus attack. In one such case, data recovery was accomplished on a drive that had been attacked by a virus that methodically erased files then in its final act of vandalism, it deleted the partition information from the drive. When the machine was rebooted, the drive was recognized, but no drive letter was assigned. The owner ran an "fdisk" to learn that no partition existed on the drive. A friend then suggested the data recovery services of Internet Desk, Inc. Fourty-eight hours later the machine was back in running order with all but 13 of some 65,000 files recovered.
