[juxtiphi]

Originally Posted by direwolf-pgh

standard pricing for professional data recovery:
single drive: $1500'ish
RAID5: $5000'ish

there are only a handful of data recovery centers in N. America.

interesting discussion


2 years ago I thought I had lost all the info on my HD after making a mistake while tweaking windows. I was told by more than one person that all the data was unrecoverable because of what I did. Now these were supposed knowledgeable people and a friend with experience in computers.

I thought I had lost about a T byte of stuff, I was about to throw the HD away and start over when my mom suggested her friends husband so I called him and he told me that for 400 hundred he would recover my lost files and reinstall windows.

this is the important part!
basically he ripped me off, as he charged me 3 hundred for file recovery and 100 to install windows but I learned something very important, your files are never gone unless you've formatted (and even then stuff may still be recoverable) or destroyed the HD completely.

All my files were still intact and all that was needed was to hook up the drive to a functional computer which fixed the problem which was a missing NT header or something like that. (I cannot remember the exact terminology) how did I figure this out? well I ended up making the same mistake again and my hard drive became inaccessible same as before so I bought another HD installed windows myself then hooked up my other HD as a slave and what do you know my files were right there ready for use. so this guy charged me 4 hundred for nothing.


my point is never think your files are gone and if you need to have them recovered do so by someone who you really trust to know something about computers (not just the most common aspects) and that wont soak you for a few minutes work