hi everyone my name is alex and im having a hdd problem

my 200gb hard drive began having major clickin sounds, i immediately pulled it from the computer. I then sent it out to a data recovery site and they quoted it at 715 dollars, plus i have to provide my own hard drive to put the old files onto.

Does this seem right? Thank you

they say i have till monday to provide them with an answer of whether or not I want to allow them to perform the task.

No, this doesn't sound right. I think most places would charge more.

If you ever have a medical procedure done, take a look at the bill closely. Likely, the doctor will charge significantly more, for maybe 1 hour of work. This won't include supplies. Data Recovery is often extremely difficult. It requires a steady hand, and expertise in many disciplines. It requires very expensive tools. It requires knowledge that you can't even get in a University, but through years of experimentation and reverse-engineering. From the point of view of a typical computer user, Data Recovery is extremely expensive, but this is actually a reasonable rate.

You may find those that charge $99. I'm sure they get lots of business, but I seriously doubt many, if any, get their data back for $99. You get what you pay for.

Also, one more point... If your data is really important to you, you should consider paying. This isn't fair, or right, but some Data Recovery firms do mean things when they recover your data (If they gave you a list of files, they already did the recovery), and you decide you don't want to pay. Often, these things ensure that nobody else will recover anything. It's best to shop around first, then send out the drive, not the other way around.

Again, not everyone does this, but it's pretty much agreed on here that it does happen.

That quote is pretty reasonable if the data is worth that amount to you. If you send it to a recovery company you should really stick with them and their price. I have seen way too many drives lately where the first quote was too much for the customer, they declined and shipped the drive back to the customer. We open it up and discover the drive was obviously damaged far beyond recovery by some other company. It's really a shame that some companies out there will damage a drive beyond recovery just so that no one else can recover it.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

we have a company here that always damages disks after evaluation when they are not assigned the work, to ensure that no other company can get the work.... would you imagine that they are the biggest and best know brand... shame on them..

No, that doesn't seem right at all. There is someone on eBay that offers a data recovery service (in a class 100 clean room) for $400 or so. He has pretty good feedback. I believe the clicking is head damage, correct?

Clicking does not always mean head damage, must see the drive.

Hi!

I would suggest the company has already recovered the data and is now putting subtle pressure on you to accept the quote. Whether it is a fair price for the work carried out nobody can say as we don't know what work is involved.
I shoudn't say this but you could call their bluff and offer them $500 saying thats all you have got. Are you a good poker player?

Fair price. I'd charge more.

Hope they don't read this forum LOL

I'd pay the money, that is a very fair price.

You'd charge more? Is it next day service?

Hi,
If your data is worth it, it's a fair price...nobody else but you self can tell.

Regards/ Bosse

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Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

It only made noise or didn't it work anymore. If I were you, I'd try copying all the files to another drive and if that doesn't work out, THEN I'd go to one of those companies. From what I know prices vary from around 600 to well into the thousands.

Hi

If the data is worth lets say $2000 (I mean U would consider paying that amount even if painfuly), it is much safer to ask a reputable company to do the DR for U.
Reasons: As I always say proper diagnosis is essential from the view of safety of the data. If U try various SW not knowing what the problem is exactly, simple running of the drive can make things much worse.
Then it is possible that no company will be able to recover anything for 2000 or even more.

So it mainly depends on the value of the data. U or your friend, neighbour could be highly educated in IT, U still won't be able to diagnose precisely without the experience needed.

regards,
pepe

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Adatmentés - Data recovery