Data Recovery Services

In today's digital society, we store most of our life on computers. Years worth of digital pictures, precious family videos as well as irreplaceable business documents. However, many of us fail to safeguard this information by performing frequent backups.

Computer hardware has a limited life span, and hard drives and digital media alike are prone to failure. Unfortunately, we see hardware failure and imminent data loss far to often in our business. There are many types of failure that can lead to data loss. Below we look at some common situations and the likelihood of recovering your data.

Computer no longer turns on

(Full recovery possible, usually $49.99 + $30.00 for parts)

This is perhaps the best case scenario, as it usually indicates failure in other system, rather than the storage device. If machine can not be repaired, information should still be perfectly safe. For a small fee, and the cost of a special enclosure, we can remove your internal storage device (hard drive or SSD drive) and install it inside of the enclosure. The new enclosure can be plugged in to any computer and used as an external hard drive, allowing full access to your data from any computer.

Computer turns on but you get “operating system not found” or “ntloader” missing message

(Usually $149-199, Data returned on DVD's unless other media is preferred)

This particular situation can be either good or bad. As you power on the computer, closely listen to the noise that the spinning hard drive generates. It is a low level whine with possibly a few clicks when the machine is first turned on. If the clicking or grinding persists, it is a sure sign of physical hard drive failure and software repair is very unlikely. If the clicking is only present on power up, we often can recover 99% of all data on the drive. Recovery takes 5-10 days, as every sector has to be copied off of the damaged drive, and later analyzed for recoverable data. This procedure is very time consuming, but rather inexpensive. Sometimes we can recover all files, including the whole file system hierarchy. In rare cases, we have to pull the files off individually, and customer receives files back stored in folder according to file types. i.e. Documents will be burned to a document DVD, music to Music DVD's and so forth. Integrity of individual files can not be guaranteed, however, often times 99.9 % of all the files are completely intact. The larger the file, the bigger likelihood of corruption it may present. As a result, large files such as movies may have missing portions and additional reconstruction may be required. Such additional work may incur additional fees.

Computer Turns on, but you get “operating system missing”, “ntloader missing” and you can hear persistent clicking and grinding noises emanating from the hard drive.

(Full recovery depends on amount of damage, costly $1000-1900 USD)

This is perhaps the worst case scenario. This usually indicates a crashed read/write head or other serious mechanical problem within the drive. These failures are usually a result of physical shock to your system, such as a bump or a fall. Notebook computers are extremely prone to such failure, as they have very little protection from shock. In fact, slamming the lid shot, can for instance render the hard drive completely unreadable. Sometimes, internal hard drive crash can be caused by other events such as temperature extremes, mechanical wear and tear and occasionally manufacturing defects. Recovery in this case is extremely difficult, and very costly. Your hard drive will have to be sent out to a laboratory, where individual platters will be removed and data extracted from each one of them. The procedure is done in clean room environment to insure lack of contaminants, and even in such conditions, chances of recovery are around 75%.

Removable media recovery (thumb / flash drives, SD, CF cards)

($59-$149)

 If a USB thumb drive has failed, it could be for a number of reasons. Most often, simple file system corruption allows for inexpensive software repair. It can be time consuming, however success rates are very high. If a drive has failed due to wear and tear, we can usually replace the connector and retrieve information. If the internal circuitry of the drive fails, the chips still contain your data. However, transferring NAND flash memory chips from failed stick to a new stick is very time consuming and extremely difficult as it requires hours of precision soldering work. The cost of such repair may approach $200.

Similar case scenarios apply to SD / CF storage media often used by digital cameras. Software recovery is often possible, however if the circuitry fails, retrieval of information becomes almost impossible due to the fact that SD cards integrate memory controller and memory chips into one sealed package.

Raid hard drive failure, raid corruption

($149-$499 depending on RAID configuration, complexity)

In enterprise environments, servers are often set up in what's called a RAID configuration, which provides additional redundancy and reliability to the overall storage system. However, even with additional safety measures built in, RAID storage can become out of sync or completely corrupt and unreadable. In such cases, we have the tools and expertise necessary to recover the files that are crucial to your business. Although the recovery process is lengthy, overall the odds of success are great.

Optical Media Recovery (CD/DVD)

(Cost varies by situation)

Due to fragility of the media, CD's and DVD's often become unreadable. Unfortunately, it is often an irreversible process. In some cases, however it is possible to re-polish the disk surface using specialized equipment or read off the files that are not effected by wear and tear using specialized CD recovery software that ignores read errors. On newer, multilayer DVD's where the physical layers of the disk have separated due to poor glue quality, recovery becomes almost impossible. Same applies to super high density storage such as Blue-Ray disks.

Corrupt Files, Forgotten Passwords & Other Data Recovery Situations

($49 -$299, Cost varies )

Since it's hard to estimate the time (or success rate) it will take to recover corrupted files, costs can vary drastically depending on the labor involved. We can also recover lost passwords on file archives, presentations, databases, quick books company files and other forms of commonly used files in various industries. Windows passwords, can be easily recovered as well. BIOS passwords are in many cases are also fully recoverable, however may require CMOS chip replacement on some modern laptops. Locked hard drives can be unlocked as well, however ATA password removal is rather expansive and often involves swapping internal parts of the hard drive, with a new unlocked drive.