Frequently Asked Questions
General Service Questions
Q: What is the most common failure in hard drives today?
A: The most common cause of data loss is physical media damage, whereby the hard disk drive receives a physical shock causing the head to hit the platter or damage one of the moving parts. This condition will not always cause a failure straight away but the condition of the platter and internal parts will probably deteriorate and then the failure will occur. This will potentially cause the most damage if a laptop or mobile device is dropped at the same time the HDD is reading or writing data.
It is important to note that all disk drives fail eventually and these failures will significantly be influenced by the environmental conditions to which the HDD has been exposed.
Q: What is your average turn-around time for a hard drive recovery?
A: The turn-around time depends on the nature and complexity of the data loss problem. The average recovery on a standard service level is 5-6 days (including evaluation, recovery and return of data). If no additional parts are required, then this can be reduced to 4-5 days.
Q: How do you charge for your service and what are the typical costs?
A: We try to make our pricing structure as transparent as possible. After an initial consultation, you will receive a fixed price range for the recovery. The next step is the evaluation, for which there is a nominal charge to cover the costs of engineering resources, necessary equipment, parts procurement, and comprehensive reporting tools.
A key feature of our evaluation service is data reports, which allow you to determine which files can be recovered before committing to full recovery fees. This enables you to make an informed decision about your recovery and only request the files you need. Beware of companies that offer "free" evaluations since, in many cases, these evaluations do not produce sufficient information for clients to make an educated decision - basically you pay for what you get! After the evaluation you will be given an exact price for the full recovery. The average price for a standard desktop recovery is £800.
Q: Where can I get the pricelist?
A: Actual pricing will vary based on the media capacity, system type, nature and severity of the data loss, as well as the service level and resources required.
Q: What type of media and operating system can you recover from?
A: We have available the capabilities and expertise to recover data from ANY storage media, operating system or file type - no matter how extreme the cause.