How to properly choose a company for recovery of your data
Please take 2 minutes to read this article. It could save your data.
Most companies offering data recovery don't actually do it...
We know that your data is important to you. So you'll want to entrust its recovery to the one who has the best chances of recovering it.
There is usually only one chance to save your data.
If data recovery fails in one company, there is little chance that the data will be saved elsewhere, due to the interventions that need to be made in the recovery process. Choosing the right company is therefore essential.
The chances of recovering data from a damaged disk in an inadequately equipped laboratory with minimal experience are zero. Today's hard drives are mechanically and electronically very complex devices, tuned for maximum performance during production. Any unprofessional intervention will make successful data recovery impossible. Even just turning on a damaged disk can be the last thing.
But how do you choose the right company to rescue your data? You usually need this service only once in a lifetime and for someone unfamiliar with this environment, the choice is very difficult, as there is a large selection on the Internet.
We have prepared several points for you to pay attention to when choosing in order to minimize the risk of losing your data completely.
- Is the selected company a real laboratory for data recovery?
Make sure that the company that will diagnose your disk is really a laboratory with equipment for recovering data from hardware-damaged disks. In the Czech Republic, there are only a few companies with at least basic equipment for recovering data. Other companies and individuals offering data recovery are only able to resolve software damage. If they receive a hardware-damaged disk, at best, they will forward it to another company for a commission, at worst, they will attempt to recover it themselves. In any case, they will turn it on to determine the type of damage. And this turn-on may be the last.
- Is the company trustworthy?
Find out the available information about the company. Often, the website only lists a "team of well-coordinated experts with many years of experience" without any details or the company's history. Most of the time, these are individuals without sufficient equipment and experience, or a "clone" of another company (some companies offer data recovery under multiple brands; if word gets around that one brand is not good, they have another). See the famous case of a company that was investigated by the police for its fraudulent actions (during diagnostics, the disk was intentionally damaged so that another company could not perform the rescue and the customer was subsequently forced to use their services at exorbitant prices). This company and its clones are still operating and will probably even appear in the first places in your search engine.
- How will the company handle your confidential data?
It is good to realize that in the event of a successful rescue, the company will have full access to your data. Larger companies usually offer to sign a confidentiality agreement, have sufficient security against data leakage (some even have NBU certification for handling classified information) and, due to the larger number of orders, they do not even have time to go through your data.
- Do not be tempted by the stated high success rate and low prices
100% data recovery success is impossible. There is always a possibility that the data will not be saved. Some defects are of such a magnitude that rescue is impossible. A common practice of some companies is to obtain damaged media from the customer at any cost (very low prices in the price list on the website, during a telephone consultation or when receiving an order). Once the company receives your disk, it will declare that the defect is of a serious nature and will demand several times this amount (and claim that it will not rescue the data anywhere else).
Remember that you usually only have one chance to rescue your data.
If the lost data is important to you, do not look optically for the cheapest price. Seek professional services.
**Read an example of wrong and right steps to recover a hardware-damaged drive
