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What you need to know about Data Recovery methods and cost .....

We receive several calls each month, with the tone of shear panic in the customer's voice, explaining how they can no longer retrieve data from their hard drive (HDD) or the PC no longer boots into Windows. Hard drives are an amazing piece of technology, and they will ALL eventually fail over time. So, to help customers better understand the problem, here is an education on the cause, some options, and the North Texas PC Rx, LLC cost-effective solution:

The top three likely Hard Drive failure scenarios:

1.The Hard Drive circuit board failed (see Solution 1, below).

2.The actuator arm is stuck - Mechanical failure; normal operation is for the mechanical actuator arm to move across the spinning platters, on a bed of air, at a very high RPM rate.

3.The platter(s) are damaged - Mechanical Failure (typically pitted or scratched). If a laptop PC hard drive, or external hard drive, has been dropped, or the drive was exposed to an environment of vibration, there is a good chance the actuator arm has bounced off of the platter several times at 7,200 RPM and the surface of the platter(s) are scratched, or, the actuator arm read/write heads have been damaged. If you hear a screeching noise, or high-pitch noise, then there is a chance the actuator arm is resting on one of the internal platters creating damage.

     A word of caution: NEVER let a service technician convince you they can try a few things by opening up the hermitically sealed hard drive case to “take a look”. Hard drives are assembled in a clean room for a good reason; to ensure dust particles stay off of the highly polished magnetic platters. The actuator arms are very delicate, fragile, and easy to break.

The task of data recovery is not for the faint hearted and about 95% of the time the issues are related to damage from items 2 or 3 listed above. However, there are solutions for recovering your data:

Solution 1 (effective about 10% of the time):

This is the least likely and the least expensive solution. Call a PC Service person. They should be able to remove the hard drive from your computer and plug the drive into a docking station. The docking station is plugged into a USB port, using a secondary PC. If the hard drive registers, it will appear in the Windows Explorer and/or the Disk Management screen directory. If data folders and/or files appear below the drive letter, then the issue could be the hard drive Device Driver on your own PC, and the software driver will need to be deleted and reinstalled. If a drive letter appears in Windows Explorer, but data does not register (no folders or files appear), it’s likely a mechanical failure. If the drive letter does not appear at all, it could be the HDD circuit board. Matching a replacement circuit board, with the exact manufacturing codes, date codes, and firmware versions, is successful about 10% of the time. A replacement board, plus shipping and labor, could easily cost you between $200 and $300, and that is with no guarantee of success. Locating a matching, used, circuit board is often not an easy task itself.

Solution 2:

Send your hard drive to a commercial Data Recovery company:

Have your hard drive sent to a reputable data recovery company to recover your data. However, this can be an expensive proposition, depending on the data recovery house. There are some data recovery houses in the north Texas area, and most, if not all, will charge you just to evaluate the damage and provide you an estimated cost to recover the data. Sometimes the cost to recover is based on the amount of data. Estimates for an assessment/evaluation typically start between $200 - $600. The cost to actually recover the data can easily cost between $800 to over $3500, depending on the amount of data and severity of the hard drive damage.

Solution 3:

Use North Texas PC Rx, LLC. for a low-risk/cost-effective solution:  

We use a two-step recovery process:

a.  We will remove your hard drive from your computer then place the drive in a special hard drive docking station. If the hard drive will register on our test computer, using some special software tool we use, then we will copy your personal data over to a back-up hard drive or a flash drive for a small service fee (typically $79) plus the cost of the flash drive or external hard drive (if you do not provide your own back up media). If we do not recover your data using this method, there is NO service charge, and we will proceed to recovery method “b.” below.

b.  If we cannot recover your data using the docking station method, that is usually a red flag indicating a mechanical failure does exist inside the hard drive case, which usually occurs 90% of the time. In this situation we will ship your hard drive to our data recovery partner company, located out of state, at no cost to you. We have a special arrangement which provides us with a deep wholesale discount, based on hard drive quantity, and we pass a considerable portion of that discount to our customers. Our partner company will recover your data in a clean room environment, and if the data is recoverable, we will provide you a data recovery quote beforehand. If you accept the quote, then all you need to do is provide us with an authorization to proceed, payment method, and a file list of critical data. Although every effort will be made to recover all data, the critical data list is used to determine a successful recovery. If the critical data IS recovered then you will be charged the quoted amount. If the critical data cannot be recoverd, then you will not be charged. Additional details are available on our partner's Terms of Service website, which we will forward you that information prior to shipping your hard drive. The standard data recovery occurs within five to ten business days. Expedited service is also available at an added cost. Your recovered data file names, not actual file content, will then be posted to a password protected website for your review and final approval. If the recovered data is over 50GB, your recovered data will be transferred to a new portable 2TB hard drive, available for approximately $129 (plus sales tax), or to a storage device that you provide. To give you an idea on cost to recover your data, using our solution, we have seen estimates as low as $298 to as high as $1401 (severe damage cases and high data volume), with a current running customer average of $646. Should you choose not to accept the data recovery estimate, then your hard drive will be returned for a $20 shipping fee plus tax. A low-risk, low-cost solution, indeed.

*NOTE: Before you hire a PC Service Technician, or use a Data Recovery service provider, be sure you ask what they charge if they CAN NOT recover your data. If they tell you that you pay whether you recover the data or not, my advice would be to locate another service provider that truly has your best interest and wallet in mind.