Laptop HD repair/recovery question

[Jerry Feldman]

On 11/17/2008 03:12 PM, Bill McGonigle wrote:
> Alex Hewitt wrote:
>   
>> When I looked into having them recover a customer
>> drive they wanted somewhere north of $3k but their price was
>> proportional to the percentage of data recovered.
>>     
>
> I've used DriveSavers before and they do a good job.  Their pricing is 
> sort of a nice qualifier - if $3K is too much to even consider for the 
> data, then a DIY approach is warranted.  If $3K sounds like a bargain 
> not to lose that data, send the drive to them.
>
>
>
>   
Last summer one of my drives in my home system failed. My nightly backup 
was not restarted after an upgrade to SuSE 11.0, and the older backups 
were gzipped tarballs with a VDI in the middle preventing a full 
restoration, mostly my emails (10+ years worth) + some financial stuff. 
I use Aero Data Recovery (www.*aero*dr.com ). They have a flat fee with 
no fee if they cannot recover. In my case, they were unable to recover, 
but they recommended another data recovery company, and they would ship 
to that company free of charge with a 10% discount. It cost me under 
$1000 for a full recovery of my ReiserFS file system. The company they 
shipped to wasESS Data Recovery (www.*essdatarecovery*.com, ). Both 
companies responded both by email and voice. I had also called a couple 
of companies locally. The problem with some of the companies are they 
charge you up ront whether they can  recover your data or not. They 
returned my data in an NTFS formatted 255GB drive (I think I paid for a 
160, but they gave me a free upgrade to the 255). In any case, beore 
sending your drive of, look at the company. The first place I looked at 
was Tech Fusion in Harvard Square. After I sent in a query, I remember 
dealing with them many years ago, and after looking at reviews and their 
prices, it was an easy decision to avoid them. first, they charge about 
$600 up front, and keep about $500 if they are unable to recover.

Another issue that effects price is time.  In my case, I sent my drive 
in, and got a reply for either standard or priority. With standard, you 
get into a FCFS queue, and your drive will wait for a few days. I think 
in my case, the total time was about 2 weeks, which was fine, and I'm a 
happy camper,and have changed my backup procedure.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 251 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20081118/5bc38f49/attachment.bin