Data recovery companies UK

[Adept PC Repair]

I dropped off a hard drive to Data Track labs, I must say I was impressed at first, and it was simply the customer's decision not to go ahead with the recovery as they didn't have the cash.

I tried to rearrange to drop the hard drive back, and apparantly it is subject to new charges as it has been collected by myself.

After reading the rest of this thread i'm giving PC Image a go after a nice conversation on the phone with him. He seemed to know his stuff, and from what he said on the phone the max price would be what data track labs wanted to charge.

He also said, that in the report from data track they said all the heads are damaged. He said it is very unlikely that every head is damaged.

 

[lcoughey]

I dropped off a hard drive to Data Track labs, I must say I was impressed at first, and it was simply the customer's decision not to go ahead with the recovery as they didn't have the cash.

This happens. Nothing anyone can do about that.

I tried to rearrange to drop the hard drive back, and apparantly it is subject to new charges as it has been collected by myself.

I'm assuming that this means that they would charge you for the return shipping. Seems fair, as there is no reason why they should lose money for giving you a quote.

After reading the rest of this thread i'm giving PC Image a go after a nice conversation on the phone with him. He seemed to know his stuff, and from what he said on the phone the max price would be what data track labs wanted to charge.

Good choice.

He also said, that in the report from data track they said all the heads are damaged. He said it is very unlikely that every head is damaged.

Unlikely, but possible. http://www.recoveryforce.com/images/stories/drives/10200.JPG

Do report back and let us know how you make out.

 

[Adept PC Repair]

Sorry, must not have explained about the return shipping part.

There was no shipping on their part, I drove to them, dropped it off, then drove to them and picked it up.

I asked if the same quote applied if I were to drop it back off and they said no.

So, basically, they make up their prices as they go along.

Their quote was on the higher end that PC image quoted anyway, i've sent it off to them today and will keep everyone updated.

 

[Simmy]

Hoping one of the data recovery companies on this board can offer some advice.

A good customer of mine has lost nearly 30 years of jazz/blues radio recordings and he is understandably devastated. I had him running an online backup system which backed up everything to March this year, but due to the amount of data being backed up across so many drives, he found it slowed the machine down and decided to stop the online backup software altogether.

Fast forward to him sending the drive to Data Track Labs where they intially said;

I am pleased to inform you the evaluation has been completed on your failed hard drive.
Please note there is nothing to pay upfront and you only make payment if you are happy with the recovery outcome/we recover the data you require or recover all data.
Recovery Costs and Service Options.
Economy Service (14 – 21 days)
Data Recovery - £299.99
Required Parts - £100
TOTAL Cost excluding VAT - £399

After proceeding with the quote, my customer gets this follow up email

I am pleased to inform you we have successfully extracted data from the failed hard drive. Please see attached file list. It has proven to be more difficult than anticipated as the disk become totally inoperable during the final stages of recovery. There is little to no chance of any further recovery from the hard drive due to deep scoring of the platter surface. The good news is that we managed to clone the majority of the data areas before this occurred.

The amount of recovered data exceeds our data transfer limit, we are able to provide a new 1 TB hard drive for £75.

Data integrity of the recovered data is estimated to be approximately 20 - 30% due to data shifts in the file system caused be corrupt firmware and a high level of media disintegration. This means that 70 - 80% of the data will be completely useless in its current state.

We are able to offer a file verification and repair service in order to increase the file integrity to over 98%. This service is £199.99 ex VAT, it covers every file on the filelist, and we can also include a free 1 TB portable HDD (£75). Unfortunately this process is completely separate from the recovery process which we have quoted for and therefore chargeable.


Please make immediate payment for the data recovery by following this link www.datatrack-labs.co.uk/make_payment.asp

Total amount payable is £479.99 or £554.99 which includes a new hard drive (20-30% usable data)

or you can pay £719.98 which includes data integrity of over 98% and a brand new 1 TB portable hard drive.

The data will be transferred to alternative media and dispatched with royal mail special delivery.

So they are claiming read/write head damage (the reason for the initial £100 "required parts"), platter damage and firmware corruption causing corrupt data.

They initially stated no payment until he was happy with the recovery but are now demanding the full amount up front.

On top of this, my customer sent them a new 1Tb drive with the damaged drive and they are now trying to charge him for an extra one, claiming the recovered data "exceeds our data transfer limit". The damaged drive is only 500Gb I believe, so the 1Tb drive he sent along with it should more than cover it. It's yet to be seen whether they've lost/misplaced the one he sent.

Overall, I'm pretty unimpressed with the way they work, as the original price has now shot up with virtually no chance of any other data recovery company being able to recover the data. They made no suggestion that file verification might be required or additional costs might be incurred. Does this seem plausible to you pros?

I also suggested he send the drive to PCImage, but that didn't seem to happen

 

[Kitten Kong]

Ouch.. thats a massive increase in costs.

Any chance of speaking to Sean at PCImage, and get his take on it?

 

[Simmy]

Just sent him a message Nige.

I would love to send the job to him, based on the number of recommendations he has on these forums. Although I'm not sure it's worth the risk given DTL have recovered the data and claim further recovery on the drive isn't possible. All too convenient for them, I feel...

 

[dombooth]

Give Sean a call, he's the man to speak to. If you send the drive off you get a 15% trade discount.

Dom

 

[tiredtechnician]

Data Track Labs

Hi there,

Sorry for reviving a month old thread, but I just found these forums via google as i am having issues with Data Track Labs in a very similar way to you and was very interested in your views.

I wanted to find out what the outcomes were of your dealings with them and if anyone else has dealt with them since?

I ask, because I have recently used them, sent a hard drive off being quoted £175, which then quickly become £500, which I agreed to as I felt the data was worth that, however then was told I needed a £75 1TB hard drive (even though the user profile I needed is actually very small - they refused to put on CD-R). I was then told

Data integrity of the recovered data is estimated to be approximately 25 - 40% due to data shifts in the file system caused by corrupt firmware and a high level of media disintegration. This means that 70 - 80% of the data will be completely useless in its current state.

Which now brings the total to £836.69. Just seems to keep going up and up. Every time i agree to something, it seems there is another charge.

The worrying thing is, the emails I have received are almost word for word identical to the one quoted by Simmy on this thread.

Whenever I try to discuss the subject with the company I get very abrupt replies. I cannot even back out now, they are demanding immediate payment saying that they have already recovered the drive (albeit without usable data). It might be I am just very unlucky and just a coincidence, but i'd be interested to know how things went for others.

Looks like I might have to check this one off as a learning experience and pay them the minimum amount I need to to be able to walk away. (which seems to be £500 for the 25% usable data. I hear good things about PCImage on these forums though, wish I had checked here first! I won't be sending any other dead hard drives off to DTL!

 

[NYJimbo]

Hi there,

Sorry for reviving a month old thread

This is a forum for technicians or people starting a business. You are neither, you are just looking for help with a drive. Maybe you should go here:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=22

 

[tiredtechnician]

I am a technician in an IT dept for a business, but don't run my own business. Not looking for help with the drive, was just interested in how others had got on with that company. Sorry about that.

 

[Kitten Kong]

Edited, as did not notice that tiredtechnician has in fact started their own intro thread and post.