The iPod and smart phone explosion has ensured hard disk drives are pretty much everywhere you look. These drives are faster than before, and yet aren't any more dependable or crash-proof than they were even five years ago. What this means to you is that inevitably, your hard drive will fail. You will need a hard drive recovery service at some point, the only question is when.
While hard drive use in general has grown, hard drive data recovery service companies have grown in number as well. This increased competition has ensured that data recovery service pricing is lower than it has ever been, and no longer is it necessary for the user to settle for substandard customer service. But if there is a problem with industry growth, it's that pretty much everyone with a shingle and a soldering iron now offers "complete hard drive recovery service", even if they can't actually offer the service.
Selecting A Professional Data Recovery Service Company
When an emergency data recovery situation strikes, understand first of all that you're going to need a professional. DIY is not going to be your best direction here, unfortunately. Second of all, know that the best choice is an actual expert, a professional hard drive recovery company that does that, and that only. Making the mistake of going to your neighborhood computer repair shop when you have a damaged hard drive can be an expensive one, both in time and money, as many of these shops don't actually do restorations in-house!
Computer repair shops are the absolute worst nightmare for hard drive recovery service companies in general. They provide a local service that works in a lot of simple operating system cases, but in physical data loss, about one in 100 can actually perform a data recovery service in-house. The rest of them spend a lot of time with low-grade disk recovery software hoping and praying to restore lost files, only to discover that without the right tools, they will only be unsuccessful. At this point, instead of actually telling the customer, "no, we're not equipped", they then attempt to outsource the service at the lowest price to the lowest costs provider. Quality never really comes into it, and for the end user, this means a lot of time and money spent for sometimes subpar results.
Accept Nothing Less Than A Professional
If you find your drive has been bricked, or you have a RAID array that needs repair fast, it's a high-stress situation. Certainly, you don't want any more stress tacked on. So a great tip for avoiding additional stress is to take your hard drive recovery to a professional. If the company's name features the words "Networking Service" or "Computer Repair", don't bother. What you need in any emergency data loss situation is not a mechanic, but a real HDD specialist. Anything less and you're putting everything at risk.
Want to avoid being taken for a ride by a fairly aggressive computer repair shop desperate for your money? It's all about the questions you ask. A great one, of course, is to ask how many RAID server recovery jobs the shop performs in a week. If the answer is, "er, what?" or seems a little confused, it's time to move on. If there's one somewhat counter-intuitive thing you should know about the hard drive recovery service industry, it's that the more expert your chosen company is, the less expensive it will be.
Now that you know the difference, why not see what a real hard drive recovery service looks like. Check out a number of ways to fix your damaged hard drive or recover files without the use of software.
